The rest of the story: Jeremiah Sanders on Carmina Burana
If you caught our Press-Citizen column this week, you met Jeremiah Sanders, the baritone soloist for Carmina Burana on Nov. 22. The short version: choral music is for EVERYBODY, Carmina is hedonistic in the best way, wait for “Dulcissime,” and get off the fence. Read the column here.
I met Jeremiah at Into Full Flame last June and got to chat a bit more at Big Grove after the concert, and I’ve been a little starstruck ever since. When I sent questions for the column, they answered by voice memo, apologizing for their “morning voice” and their “word salad,” and then said something quotable every 30 seconds. A 500-word column couldn’t hold it all.
So here’s the rest of the story, lightly edited, in Jeremiah’s own words.
“Very Loki-an”
In the column, Jeremiah’s mom called Carmina “Halloween music.” Jeremiah landed on a different word, then kept thinking out loud.
Does Carmina feel dark to you, or joyful?
“I don’t know if ‘joyful’ is the word I would use. I think the word I would use is hedonistic, in a surprising way. I know monks originally wrote the poems. I guess I’m surprised that’s the word that came to me, but that’s the word I want to say.
“As I’m unpacking it, I think there’s both a delightfulness, a playfulness, a fun-ness to hedonism in my brain. And then there are also those seedy, darker undertones. I think of Loki from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, how he’s able to embody both of those aspects at once. Maybe I’m reaching, but he would put Carmina Burana on his playlist to do mischief, or to just enjoy dinner. It seems very Loki-an in nature to me.”
Praying through the killer part
Orff writes the baritone part across nearly every register a singer has, from a low, speech-like chant in the tavern to the falsetto of “Dies, nox et omnia.” (Jeremiah’s reaction, reading that question aloud: “Oh, yes he does.”)
How do you pace yourself so there’s something left for the hardest moments?
“I’m praying through this right now! I’ve taken it to my teacher. I’ve been looking at it since the summer and listening to a couple of different recordings to see what kind of colors are possible for different types of baritones. Two of my favorites, Sherrill Milnes and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, have different sizes of instruments, and they use different colors throughout the whole score.
“What I’m noticing is that people make different choices based on the size and weight of their instrument. That has been very liberating, because I get a little nervous about trying to create a color that maybe isn’t authentic to my instrument. I get to interpret this in the way that works for my voice, and in the way that Chamber Singers and I want to shape this journey.
“As a soloist, you spend so much time by yourself in a room before you ever get to rehearsal. So I keep thinking, ‘I just got to sing with them in June. I know this ensemble is going to sing this so well.’ All the interplay we’ll have is something I look forward to in the practice room, and something I’m looking forward to in November.”
The xylophone in your elementary music room
If you played a xylophone in elementary music class, you’ve met Carl Orff. His teaching method, Orff Schulwerk, is still in music classrooms everywhere.
What’s the connection between classroom Orff and Carmina?
“I was actually a music education major, and we had some Kodály and Orff sessions. The percussion is what jumps out at me immediately as the connection. We’re doing an arrangement with two pianos and a whole battery of percussion instruments, so having that featured will be the clearest tie.
“I don’t know that kids will come and say, ‘Oh yeah, this sounds like what we learned in class.’ But for those who went on to play instruments in middle and high school and still love making music, that could be the immediate tie-in. You get to experience the legacy of Carl Orff. That’s super cool. What a huge impact for that man to have on music history and education.”
Through a teacher’s ear
Jeremiah teaches voice at the University of Iowa, so we asked them to give the audience a lesson.
If this were a voice lesson, what would you tell your student to listen for that most of the audience will miss?
“I’m training soloists, so I would tell them to listen for the soloists. My goal is to get my students to be not only technically proficient and not only dramatically engaged, but to use both of those tools for their interpretation and give an embodied performance that connects with the audience. I’d want them to be attuned to whether that’s happening.
“But this is such a choral masterwork that you cannot ignore the ensemble. The ensemble is just glorious. If I weren’t a soloist, I probably would have asked Alex Koppel to be in the ensemble for this one, because I love it so much. It has everything a good masterwork would have. There’s fast, there’s slow, there’s sweet, there’s… I don’t want to say savory, but there are some unsavory bits too! The soloists take up maybe a third of the entire score. The rest is how all the different parts come together to tell a story in concert form.”
And the moment everyone should wait for?
“I like ‘Dulcissime’ at the end, the soprano solo. We had a group called A Cappella Choir in my undergrad at Manchester College, and we did Carmina Burana. I remember the first time in rehearsal I heard that moment. It was sublime. It felt like the air in the room was both supple and also gone. It was breathtaking. It’s a gorgeous, beautiful moment in what is a pretty raucous piece overall, that kind of release after all of this buildup.”
“Not too many organizations like this”
Jeremiah called this one the easy question.
What’s it like singing with Chamber Singers?
“Oh, it’s so wonderful! That one’s easy. It literally has been one of my favorite parts of living in Iowa City. There are not too many organizations like this in the country, I would say, especially at the size you all have and the quality of singing you all do. I’m consistently impressed and just honored to sing with you all, truly. It’s a really special experience for me.”
The feeling, Jeremiah, is mutual.
Feeling a little FOMO?
Jeremiah’s parting words, for anyone still deciding: “I hope whoever’s on the fence is feeling a little FOMO right now, because you won’t want to miss it. On everybody’s part, this is an explosive fireworks show. It’s going to be literally awesome.”
Jeremiah sings alongside soprano Jenna Kreider and tenor Adam Griffiths, with the full Chamber Singers of Iowa City, two pianos and percussion.
Carmina Burana is Sunday, Nov. 22 at 3 p.m. at Voxman Concert Hall. Before that, get your spook on Friday, Oct. 30 at 7:30 p.m., when CSIC Consort debuts The Haunted Consort at the Masonic Lodge. Season tickets cover both fall concerts, plus British Voices on March 7 and The Watchful Heart on June 6. Concert tickets, including season tickets are available.