Pacific Chorale will celebrate 50 seasons with a retrospective concert in Costa Mesa

Oct. 26, 2017 5:35 PM PT

It’s a group with small beginnings that managed to rise to national prominence.

In September 1968, leaders of the Irvine Community Chorus, newly created through a UC Irvine extension program, put out an audition notice for singers.

As organizers recalled to the Los Angeles Times a year later, they expected 50 people but got swamped with more than 250. It was clear that interest in choral music was high in Orange County.

Even then, the organizers sought to make the singers an A-list ensemble. And what started as a small community chorus eventually morphed into the Irvine Master Chorale and then the Pacific Chorale, which is now one of three resident companies based at Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center for the Arts.

The chorale boasts a roster of some 200 singers — nearly all of whom are unpaid. It has an annual budget of more than $2 million, multiple recordings and 13 international tours to its credit.

But before all that, it took many years of singing in disparate places — from churches to the Santa Ana High School gym — before the chorale landed its first home in 1986 with the opening of Segerstrom Hall in Costa Mesa.

Twenty years later, it moved into the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, a 2,000-seat venue designed with orchestras and choirs in mind.

Lenora Meister, a former music teacher who sings second soprano and is in her 46th year with the chorale, recalled how special it was for the choir to call both Segerstrom venues home.

“That, to me, is just the most prestigious thing I could ever think about for myself, having the opportunities to sing in halls like that,” Meister said. “Most choruses don’t get that chance.”

Meister, the chorale’s longest-serving singer, also recalled how the group performed in Estonia in 1991, not long before the Baltic state regained its independence from the Soviet Union. The chorale sang Estonia’s pre-Soviet national anthem.

“The people stood with tears falling down their eyes. It was all the older generation,” Meister said. “No one was supposed to perform that work ever, and we did anyway.”

On Sunday, the chorale will celebrate its 50th season with a performance at the Segerstrom concert hall that organizers say will look to the past and the future. In addition to 140 singers from the chorale, performers will include singers from the Southern California Children’s Chorus and Cal State Fullerton, along with some soloists. The Pacific Symphony will accompany the singers, and Robert Istad, the chorale’s new artistic director, will conduct.

The concert will begin with the U.S. premiere of “A Celestial Map of the Sky,” commissioned by Manchester Grammar School in England and written by British composer Tarik O’Regan.

The work, first performed in Manchester in 2015, was inspired by two Albrecht Dürer woodcuts engraved in 1515, when Manchester Grammar School was founded. The woodcuts are celestial maps distinctive for being the oldest printed European star charts.

Istad, the chorale’s assistant conductor since 2004 before taking the helm at the start of the 2017-18 season, said “A Celestial Map of the Sky” helps exemplify the evening’s theme of connecting through love and community.

“It’s going to be a really moving event,” he said.

Second in the set will be James Hopkins’ “Songs of Eternity,” the first choral-orchestral work commissioned by the Pacific Chorale. It premiered in 1993.

“I see that piece as a real fulcrum moment for the Pacific Chorale,” Istad said.

The concert will conclude with selections from Leonard Bernstein’s 1971 “Mass.”

Istad called the Bernstein production ambitious for the Pacific Chorale. It will include Cal State Fullerton dancers.

The evening is dedicated to Rita Major, a founding member of the Pacific Chorale who died this year at age 74. She had sung soprano in the chorale since 1968 and had stints working for the Pacific Symphony. At the time of her death, she was education director for the Philharmonic Society of Orange County.

Istad called Major a staple of the group. She had planned to sing in the 50th-season celebration concert.

“We want to remember Rita with fondness and with love,” Istad said. “I think she would have loved this concert.”

The concert hall lobby will have a display about Major, as well as Pacific Chorale archives.

John Alexander, the chorale’s former artistic director who retired this year after a 45-year run, will attend the show, Istad said.

“He is very happy to be sitting in the audience and enjoying this without any stress,” Istad said with a laugh.

Elizabeth Pearson, the chorale’s president and chief executive, said she feels special to be heading the group during its 50th year.

“I am so fortunate to be a part of a classical music organization that not only preserves the tradition of the choral repertoire from famous composers throughout the ages but that also celebrates American composers, including current-day innovators,” she said in an email. “It is particularly exciting for me to be able to work with such a talented and inspiring new conductor at this pivotal point in the organization’s evolution.”