Our Conductor-Executive Director Tim Sharp

Tulsa Oratorio Chorus artistic director Tim Sharp began Sunday afternoon's concert with an effort at what he called "truth in advertising." The official title of the piece the chorus performed at Trinity Episcopal Church was "The All-Night Vigil" by Rachmaninoff. However, Sharp told the capacity crowd, "This is not going to take all night." 

 

In fact, the performance hardly took what you could call a sizable chunk out of a Sunday afternoon. It took the chorus about 40 minutes to perform the 11 movements inspired by a section of a traditional service of the Russian Orthodox Church.

 

But within that relatively brief time was a superb performance of a challenging work by a passionate and well-prepared group of local singers. Rachmaninoff's "All Night Vigil" (or, as it is often called, "Vespers," since the bulk of the piece drawn from the Vespers portion of the original service) is a work of atmosphere and nuance, of distinct sounds and phrases carefully and densely layered together – ancient chants burnished with early 20th century harmonies, sonic effects that made certain notes shimmer like gold leaf under candlelight.