Friday, July 4, 2008

Turtle Creek Chorale heads to Miami for GALA festival

By Arnold Wayne Jones of Dallas Voice

The Turtle Creek Chorale sings with “Hairspray” star Nikki Blonsky at a Christmas concert last year.

When Jonathan Palant set down his baton last Thursday, June 26, he should have breathed a sigh of relief. He had just concluded the final performance of the final concert of his inaugural season as artistic director or the Turtle Creek Chorale, filling a position left vacant when longtime leader Timothy Seelig stepped down last summer.

Since October, Palant had helmed four major concert series plus several chamber performances, so for casual observers, this was the beginning of his down time, the lull before the December holiday concert five months away.

Instead, this is just when things are beginning to heat up for him.

Next week, Palant and 130 singing members of the chorale will travel to Miami to participate in the GALA Choruses 2008 festival — like the Olympics, a quadrennial event that brings together more than 4,000 singers representing 160 GLBT choral groups from North America and Europe.

But it won’t be just chorale members heading to Miami. Representatives from the Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts and the North Texas GLBT Chamber of Commerce will be in attendance, lobbying GALA officials to bring the choral festival to Dallas in 2012. And this all comes on before the most ambitious season ever for the chorale.

“We’ll be doing six concerts this year — in 28 years, the most we’ve ever done in one season,” according to Palant.

None of this comes at an easy time for the East Coast native and recent Texas transplant. Palant joined the chorale directly from his doctoral studies, replacing a 20-year veteran in the leadership role.

Seelig’s long stint as artistic director and his strong personality often had him at loggerheads with the chorale’s board of directors, but also engendered great loyalty among many of the singing members of the chorus.

The combination poses hurdles for Palant.

“During a transition year, being used to one style for 20 years, you have to take a step back and let things develop at their own speed,” says Craig Robinson, president of the TCC and leader of the singing members.

But Robinson and Palant both agree that the transition, while occasionally slow going, has ultimately worked out.

“You can’t force trust, but every concert, we’re getting a little closer,” Palant says, noting that collectively, the chorale set many milestones in the past year.

Palant stepped in during a difficult period for arts organizations nationwide. When Dallas’ Arts District re-launches in October of next year, it will be the largest urban arts center in the United States, boasting the nation’s newest opera house and a state-of-the-art theater and putting Dallas among “the ranks of the world’s greatest cultural destinations for the performing and visual arts,” according to Bill Lively, president and CEO of the performing arts center.

But fundraising for individual arts groups has been taxed by a sluggish economy and federal arts funding that has decreased to a trickle.

Accordingly, the chorale’s three “traditional” concerts — near Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Memorial Day — will be supplemented by three more under the “TCC Presents” banner, featuring special guests Joan Rivers, the King’s Singers and the United States Army Chorus.

The new series “fulfills our mission in a different way to entertain, educate and uplift,” Palant said, although he acknowledged that some economics are involved.

“Clearly, Joan Rivers is not the best singer in the world,” Palant says with a smile. “But we’re a vocal arts organization, and with the success [last season of “Hairspray” star] Nikki Blonsky, we decided to augment and expand our mission” beyond what the chorale has done in the past.

“Our economy has forced arts organizations to reevaluate the revenue side, meaning ticket sales,” Palant says. “Just like the Dallas Symphony Orchestra did a few years ago, we recognize the need to broaden one’s palate in the media-centric lifestyle in which we live — the click generation.”

The chorale is hoping the visibility brought by hosting the GALA Choruses Festival in 2012 will bring focus to the group and increase its audience.

If the festival does come here (Minneapolis and Denver are also bidding for it), all of the performance spaces in the Arts District will be utilized for one event — “the first time that one local arts group will have done that, and by a GLBT group — in July,” says Peter Anderson, chairman of the TCC board and a professional in the hospitality industry. “It’s a perfect storm of circumstances.”

The decision on the site of the 2012 festival should be made by November, but until then, the chorale will remain busy preparing for Palant’s sophomore season. But he seems at ease with it all.

“There was a little pressure this year on Jonathan [taking the reins from Seelig] that won’t be there next year,” says Anderson.

Palant echoes the idea that he is not in competition with the past but forging ahead to the future.

“I like to say Tim hung his painting on the wall and I’m hanging my painting next to his — both are similar in shape and color, but different compositionally. The [challenge] becomes to push the sound to my concept,” Palant added. “But it’s just a change of style. I inherited a musically strong ensemble.”

The GALA Choruses Festival 2008 takes place in Miami, July 12–18. The TCC’s opening concert of the 2008-09 season, featuring Joan Rivers, plays at the Meyerson Symphony Center on Oct. 13.

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