Finding their voices together
New leader of Albany Pro Musica, choir members getting to know each other
Amy Biancolli
Oct. 15, 2014 Updated: Oct. 15, 2014 2:57 p.m.
1of14Jose-Daniel Flores, the new artistic director/conductor of Albany Pro Musica, leading a rehearsal at UAlbany on Tuesday Sept. 30, 2014 in Albany, N.Y. (Michael P. Farrell/Times Union)Michael P. Farrell
10of14Jose Daniel Flores-Caraballo, right, gets a hug from Karen Hitchcock, Board President of Albany Pro Musica, after she introduced him as Albany Pro Musica's new artistic director Tuesday, June 17, 2014, at City Hall in Albany, N.Y. (Lori Van Buren / Times Union)Lori Van Buren
11of14Jose Daniel Flores-Caraballo listens as Times Union Editor and APM singer Rex Smith speaks during a ceremony introducing him as Albany Pro Musica's new artistic director Tuesday, June 17, 2014, at City Hall in Albany, N.Y. (Lori Van Buren / Times Union)Lori Van Buren
12of14Jose Daniel Flores-Caraballo (Gary Gold)Gary Gold
It's Tuesday evening, and the kyries are flying in a subterranean rehearsal room at the University at Albany. Passage by passage, part by part, a few dozen men and women of assorted stripes and ages are singing their way through a complex 20th-century choral work.
Before them stands a compact, bespectacled man with a voice that lilts of Puerto Rico and a baton that utters volumes.
Work on that diminuendo, he says. More of that G from the tenors. Nail that transition from the E major to C major chords. And count! But don't be obvious about it. "Look like a good ballerina — and nobody notices that you're counting. ... So look pretty, and count like mad."
The man with the stick is Jose Daniel Flores-Caraballo, the newly arrived conductor and artistic director of Albany Pro Musica. The gathered mass is working on a Mass: a gorgeous sprawl of a work from 20th-century Swiss composer Frank Martin. Written in the 1920s for unaccompanied "double choir," with two distinct parts each for soprano, tenor, alto and bass, the piece is part of "Hope, Faith, Life, Love," APM's season-opening program, which will be performed on Saturday and Sunday.
The Mass isn't easy. But nothing in Albany Pro Musica's recent history has been exactly easy, not since losing their revered and charismatic founder, David Griggs-Janower, who died in August 2013. After three decades under his expert, sharp-witted direction, the group took its time in the search for a replacement, performing with guest conductors while interviewing and auditioning candidates from around the country.
An organist, church music director and founder of three choral groups in Vero Beach, Fla., Flores-Caraballo arrived at his audition with full awareness of Janower's legacy. He came away from it impressed by the group's musicianship and convinced that APM members, while treasuring that legacy, "are all willing and excited to be looking at the future ... to look at new challenges, to look at new repertoire, to look at new ways to do things." And that sealed it. "I knew that I was coming to the right place."
When his appointment was finally, formally announced in June at a City Hall reception, the sense of relief was palpable on all sides.
Since then, he's been unpacking at his new home in Saratoga Springs and prepping hard for the season and the upcoming concert, which takes its name and inspiration from an Eric Whitacre piece and includes, among other works, the New York premiere of APM member Steve Murray's "Horses at Midnight Without a Moon." Closing out the program is John David's "You Are The New Day," a staple of the APM repertoire. It's also one of the songs that Flores-Caraballo conducted at his audition.
"I consider this to be my personal homage to David," he says. "Even in the darkest hour, there's hope for a new day — a new day which will change your life in a new direction."
Albany Pro Musica: "Hope, Faith, Life, Love"
When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday
Where: Saturday at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, 21 Hackett Blvd., Albany; Sunday at Proctors, 432 State St., Schenectady
Tickets: $25 and $35, or $10 for students
Info: 346-6204; www.albanypromusica.org
He's already eyeing new directions for APM. He wants them to perform more widely throughout the region, he says. He hopes to expand their outreach, grow their audience, ramp up financial support and woo new listeners with music that speaks to their lives. Calling the group "ambassadors" for the Albany area, he envisions a tour choir — performing in major cities here, then heading abroad — and hopes to establish a smaller, professional 16-voice spinoff. "We want Albany Pro Musica to be (more than) just a very fine choir, which they are. We want Albany Pro Musica to be a choral organization that will have a larger outreach."
When Flores-Caraballo says "we," he means both board and singers, whose input he regards as critical. What's more, he says, APM should have sizable endowments covering education (ideally, "no less than half a million dollars"), programming (composers in residence, creation of new works) and facilities (for "venues in addition to the university"). He's also starting to wrap his arms around the 35th anniversary season in 2015-2016 and, beyond that, a 5-10-year plan.
In a word, ambitious. "It is," he agrees. But he wouldn't have made the move north with his wife, Dharma, if he were one for popping bon-bons poolside. Flores-Caraballo was well established in Vero Beach, at the peak of a career that began with a bachelor's at the Conservatory of Music in San Juan and includes a doctorate in sacred music from the Oxford Graduate Theological Foundation. But they came because they'd always been drawn to the Northeast, its history and natural beauties: He also has a part-time gig conducting the chorus of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra. And they came because of the connection, both musical and personal, that he felt with the choir.
On a break during rehearsal, a small cluster of APM folks are chatting about their new conductor. Yes, he's a switch from Janower, whom they'd known so well for so long. But Flores-Caraballo seems determined to get to know everyone in small, informal groups, they say. And he knows his music. He embraces the avant-garde. He's funny, maybe a little sarcastic sometimes, but nice. He's demanding but approachable. Well-mannered and meticulous. And passionate.
"The best part of it is the underlying passion for what he's doing. ... It's so warm," says Linda Wilkes, an APM alto since 2007. "Warmth is it," agrees tenor Paul Randall, who's been with the group 11 years. The intensity is there, but "it's not intimidating."
Flores-Caraballo, whose father led Puerto Rico's largest American Baptist Church, regards music in mystical terms. "Music is, in a way, a ministry." He doesn't mean this in any dogmatic sense, he says. But music changes people. "It is a mystery to me. ... I really feel it is a great privilege to be able to do music."
He recalls the kids who sang for him in his Vero Beach children's choir, the beauty and poignancy of the last Sunday service he led as music director — and the faces of APM singers and audience members alike during Music at the Barn, a September performance that marked his debut with the group. They were all transformed, he says.
"I look at these singers, who have a very busy life — they have children, they have careers, they have whatever it is that is outside singing — and they give so much of their time, without reservation. ... It's because the music touches their heart in a way that nothing else can."
On this Tuesday night, back in the swing of rehearsal, Flores-Caraballo is talking about a crescendo here, a B-natural there. He advises the sopranos, then snaps "Da capo!" — i.e., from the top. He asks the choir to stand and sing.
But first, the newly arrived man from Florida asks a burning question.
"Have you been apple-picking yet? ... I did it last week!" he says, grinning. "I'm excited."
abiancolli@timesunion.com
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Amy Biancolli was born in Queens, grew up in Connecticut and holds degrees from Hamilton College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. A former movie critic for the Houston Chronicle, she first wrote for the TU from 1991-2000 and bounced back into the local-arts beat in 2012. She's published three books so far: "Figuring S--- Out: Love, Laughter, Suicide, and Survival"; "House of Holy Fools: A Family Portrait in Six Cracked Parts"; and "Fritz Kreisler: Love's Sorrow, Love's Joy." When she isn't consuming the arts or writing about them, she's fiddling around with the violin in a couple of bands, among them the gypsy-jazz group Hot Tuesday.
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