Word: musica
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Teitelbaum, who has performed with Anthony Braxton as well as with his own electronic group, Musica Elettronica Viva, contributes lean, sensitive synthesizer work that is quite compatible with the suite's carefully structured textures and its theme of relentless exploration and discovery. Jenkins likes the futuristic associations of his oblique song title, and also "the poetic aspect, the way it can be said. 'Space Minds, New Worlds Survival of America.' It has a certain rhythm...
...Musica Sacra performances have a luminous clarity, not only in the music but in the text. "I'm a word man," says Westenburg, 47. "Very few people can get as excited about a well-phonated vowel or a well-timed consonant as I can." The group's work does not suffer from the chilly immaculateness of many other early-music groups, especially those of the more-authentic-than-thou persuasion...
...earlier markings might as well have been in red ink. Musica Sacra began precariously in 1964 as an outgrowth of concerts Westenburg organized as choirmaster of Manhattan's Central Presbyterian Church. Encouraged because the decision to charge admission had doubled audiences, the group incorporated as an independent entity in 1973 and progressed rapidly toward bankruptcy. The trouble was that Westenburg tried to do everything himself: collect texts, read program proofs, deliver checks to the musicians' union. Finally, with help from the New York State Council on the Arts, he hired an administrator, assembled a board of trustees...
Today, with subscriptions and ticket sales rising, Musica Sacra seems assured of a secure place in the New York concert scene. But only in the New York concert scene. "When you have a group as expensive and cumbersome to move around as ours, you can't just take it out to Davenport, Iowa," says Westenburg. "Our future for expansion lies in records and television, and we're working on both...
Besides serving as head of the choral department at Juilliard, Westenburg is now music director at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (where most of his Musica Sacra singers also perform) and conductor of the Collegiate Chorale, a 160-voice amateur chorus. And he is planning another Basically Bach festival for next year. All of this has forced him to forgo his weekly summer baseball games and subside to the status of a merely passionate fan. His team? "The Yankees-I guess because they're winners." Coming from a man with Westenburg's recent record, that figures...