Kyle Schneider waves his arms from the conductor’s podium, pointing to sections of the ensemble. He also serves as the Director of Choral Activities at Homer High School and said that group has spent the school year studying the technical requirements of the work.
“Large choral master works are a marathon and not a sprint. We have been utilizing the Mozart Requiem in its entirety throughout the entire school year, but we’ve been utilizing smaller portions of it as teachable tools and pieces of repertoire,” Schneider said.
Their performance is expected to last about 45 minutes.
Schneider is one of two people keeping time and coordinating the hundreds of musicians on stage.
Mark Robinson, his predecessor at Homer High School, is the other conductor. They’ll swap in and out during the performance. Robinson, who now directs the Kenai Peninsula Community Chorus, said the accessibility of choral music allows nonprofessional singers to perform alongside an orchestra without extensive experience.
“Choral music provides the amateur person, the amateur singer, the opportunity to touch the greatness of Mozart and Beethoven and Bach and Haydn and Brahms. It's a gift that we can do that because it is accessible, it takes a tremendous amount of work. It's not easy, but you don't have to be a student of music for all of your life to be able to accomplish that,” Robinson said.
The piece originated as a sacred mass for the dead in 18th-century Austria. It has some history in Homer, too. Robinson conducted it in the months after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when emotions were still raw. He said music provides a way to process difficult emotions.
“What better way to process grief than to immerse yourself in beautiful music. And regardless of your faith background, it has a powerful, spiritual, emotional experience,” Robinson said.
And Schneider said the act of performing in a large group creates a connection between the participants that’s physiological.
“The grand communal experience of when you're a chorus, you breathe together, right? Musicians all together, eventually, as they are working through a piece of music, their heartbeats sync up,” Schneider said.
To complement the requiem concerts, there will be participatory “Memory Walls” in the commons. Volunteer calligraphers will help people create certificates of remembrance. Local fiber artists are also volunteering to make a blanket collage.
The ensemble performs Friday at 7 p.m. in Homer High School’s Mariner Theater and Saturday at 3 p.m. at Kenai Central High School. Pre-concert lectures begin 45 minutes before each show.
