"Basses, you're all over the place! Tenors, you're too bright! Altos, I'm hearing foreign matter. Sopranos, stop wobbling. I don't want this to sound like Podunk!"
For 40 years as choirmaster of St. Alban's Episcopal Church in Westwood, James Vail has exhorted his vocalists, often in a vexed high-pitched tone accompanied by loud piano-pounding, to mind their sharps and flats.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday, June 21, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 1 inches; 47 words Type of Material: Correction
Choirmaster: A photo caption accompanying the Column One article in Saturday's Section A about James Vail, the retiring choirmaster of St. Alban's Episcopal Church in Westwood, said his final concert would be today. Vail's final St. Alban's concert was June 7; today is his final regular service.
The USC professor emeritus has spared no section over the decades but has generally reserved his most caustic commentary for the beleaguered basses. ("Somebody is singing 'Lorrrrd' instead of 'Lawd'!")
His scoldings -- and genuine if less frequent words of praise -- have all been in pursuit of the unattainable: flawless music-making.
Vail's many fans (including me, an alto in his choir the last four years) would argue he has come awfully close. Under his emphatic baton, choruses made up primarily of amateurs and handpicked orchestral ensembles have performed 125 major works, many of them several times, and myriad motets, anthems and masses. Call him elitist, and many do, but Vail cannot abide Christian "praise bands" and their amp-driven religious pop.
The concert ahead looms large. It will be Vail's last at St. Alban's because he has decided that, at age 80, it is time to go. Haydn's "Creation" and Brahms' "How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place" must be just so. Let no mezzo mangle the high A's, no baritone bleat on a rest. Vail is feeling the pressure, and that means his choristers are too.
Podunk will not do.
--
"Basses, you're picking any old pitch out of the air!"
In an era when people sit passively listening to music, Vail has persuaded hundreds of amateur disciples -- many of them elderly -- to make music. Shunning the spotlight, and without benefit of a lavishly equipped performance hall, he has had a profound effect on the city's choral and sacred music.
Vail -- lean and white-haired, with gold-rimmed spectacles -- is twice the age he was in 1969 when he walked through the doors of St. Alban's.
Woodstock, the rollicking festival in upstate New York, had just reshaped the music scene. Neil Armstrong had walked on the moon. Protests against the Vietnam War were heating up.
Vail accepted the job after being assured that he could put on an annual concert series, as he had at his previous church, St. John's Episcopal (now St. John's Pro-Cathedral). It was a pioneering concept, one that many churches have copied.
