Interview with Christopher Moore

CONTENTS

Introduction

WTH = W. Thomas Huyck
CM = Christopher Moore

21 - 1973-74

CM: We came back in August of 1973 because Sol Tax was hosting an amazing international congress of anthropologists. They came from all over the world by the thousands. They were at the Hilton, the Palmer House and heavens knows where else. The opening session and certain other meetings of the Congress were in the Auditorium Theater, and the place was packed. We took part in one of the opening ceremonies, and we were guests at a second event, which was an international sing-along that [folksinger] Pete Seeger put together. In that context, Pete Seeger spent part of a day out here with the choir.

WTH: Was that your first contact with him?

CM: That was our first direct contact with Pete Seeger. And it was a delightful way to start a season. There were a few other unusual moments. There had been a school strike the previous spring which had thrown part of our schedule into chaos. That was the point at which [U.S. President] Lyndon Johnson died and the choir was asked by Mayor Daley to sing at the City Council services for Lyndon Johnson. And the other very special moment was the performance at the Gala Concerts in June of the complete Faure Requiem, using our younger voices and our high school voices. We had perhaps never done anything quite as ambitious since.

The young baritone who did the solos on those performances was Stephen West, who went on to Oberlin and has gone on to slowly make his way in music and music theater on the East Coast as a career. The concerts were taped by WFMT and played on Music In Chicago in November of 1973, and excerpted with a series of cuts since. And it was one of the summertimes when we sang extra concerts for First National Bank and Civic Center and when we had an opera project in the chorus of I Pagliacci at Grant Park. So there were an awful lot of different things going on.

WTH: An item in the newsletter for the fall of 1974 says that the choir's "big appearance this fall, of course, was singing at the dedication of the Chagall mural in the First National Bank Plaza before an audience of about 10,000 and eventually on the NBC nightly news before an audience of millions. Some of this appearance is now in the short movie called "The Making Of A Mural."

CM: The theme music for "The Making of a Mural" was drawn from one of the pieces that the choir sang at the dedication, "The Simple Gift" and the motif of "The Simple Gift," which is very appropriate to the spirit of Chagall. It was used for that movie.

WTH: So this was an outdoor concert before 10,000 people?

CM: We were on the steps of the sunken Plaza there at First Chicago opposite the Chagall mural, and one of our young ladies, Christine Mather, was chosen to present the flowers to Marc Chagall and Mrs. Chagall, and it was, of course, a very elegant occasion. It was the unveiling of that amazing mosaic. It may not be Chagall's greatest work, but it is very true to his style and makes an impressive public monument there in the midst of our Loop business area, and it was one of the first of those major art statements. The Picasso was the other, and interestingly enough, on our way to First National Bank, we spent some time with a photographer under the Picasso, getting pictures of the choir in front of that Picasso, which have been used as signature pictures on and off ever since [see photo with names of choir members taken that day - ed.].

One of the highlights of the year (1974) was the performance of the Bartok Six Children's Choruses with the Chicago Symphony for a series of children's concerts and then for a University night. Now I might say in the discussion earlier about the problems, as well as the joys, of working with the Chicago Symphony -- the Bartok project represented the epitome of both. We had a great time with the Bartok folk songs. They were an ideal vehicle for us. But the problem with them was that if you were going to balance the Chicago Symphony with a group of singing children, it took the whole of senior tour, and the whole of senior tour for a series of in-school time performances at Orchestra Hall, which meant that we had to deny ourselves a host of days of school concerts that produced far more income than the teamwork with the Chicago Symphony did. In fact, it produced next to no income. There were some feelings down at Orchestra Hall about the amount of money they were paying us, but most of that money went straight into the coffers of the bus company for having two buses on duty for a couple of rehearsals downtown and for, I believe, it was five days of concerts downtown. So that lands up being a dozen or 14 buses, which was 60-70% of the money we took in from doing this.

WTH: What...did they have five days of concerts and the audiences were school children?

CM: Yes. This was the series that the Chicago Symphony has been doing for some years of concerts to which children from school are sold tickets in groups and bussed from school to Orchestra Hall. And they would do two concerts on a given day, but there were something like eight fillings of Orchestra Hall. In other words, there were four days in which there were two concerts each day by the Symphony, and on that round by us with them.

WTH: So they must have known those songs pretty well?

CM: Oh, yes. And we could, of course, use them with piano accompaniment or a capella. They are designed for a capella use in our independent concerts. But it was a lot of fun, but it was a hard problem.

We need to date this one. The Centennial of the birth of Herbert Hoover. Well, it is very exactly dateable. It is the day that Richard Nixon stepped down as President of the United States and Gerald Ford was installed. That was the day -- a Friday, I believe [Aug. 9, 1974 -- Ed.] -- that we headed for West Branch, Iowa. We were under the sponsorship of the trustees of the Hoover Library and of the National Park Service. We had arranged with the Scattergood School that is only a mile or two up the road to use their facilities and to camp at Scattergood. We had arranged with them to bring their kitchen staff back and serve us meals over a day and a half period -- at least Friday's dinner. I'm trying to remember whether we were there for lunch. We may have been -- something like lunch on Friday through breakfast on Sunday morning. And Saturday were the Centennial festivities.

Now, this was a gigantic celebration. There was a 2-week Chatauqua-like entertainment and edification celebration -- speakers, panels, performing arts of all kinds. There was a giant tent erected on the grounds and for days ahead of the Centennial there was all kinds of celebration -- local and national -- of historical importance, reflections on the America that had been, as well as just straight entertainment. The Friday that we were arriving was to be a more or less quiet day after the Chatauqua, and then on Saturday the actual Centennial. There was to be a graveside observance at the grave of the Hoovers, which is on those grounds, and there was to be a giant convocation that normally would have been addressed by the President of the United States. We got the Secretary of the Interior under the circumstances.

I had had quite a time as to how I would deal with the question of dealing with Mr. Nixon if I had to. And I had reached no clear conclusion, but it became obvious that I probably wasn't going to have to. We listened to radios on the bus and were crossing the Mississippi River into Iowa when Nixon got in the helicopter and left and Ford was sworn in. And less than an hour later, we passed through West Branch headed for Scattergood for lunch.

The invitation was very interesting. We had made a series of trips, of course, out through that country and back through that country -- Interstate 80 is a major route to and from all kinds of territories in the West. And early on, I went into West Branch, looked for the Hoover facilities and saw that this was something we should take advantage of. So over the years, I and the choir had become good friends with the director of the Hoover Library.

And sometime before the Centennial, as plans were being made -- probably two years in advance -- the library director took me aside on one of those trips and said, "What are the chances? Could you do something for me? Write me a proposal. This is the kind of thing we're going to be doing, but what I envisioned is a role like chorus on duty for the actual observance." There was an army band -- one of the major military music units in the country -- that came in for that end of it, and we were the chorus on duty. Patriotic music and various other kinds of things with other elements, classical and other serenading parts around the edges of the ceremonies.

Now, of course, the whole celebration was one-upped by that unique moment in Presidential history. We hit about the only circumstance short of the death of a president or major surgery or something that would have precluded the presence of a President. We were excited about the program on its own terms -- this was in August. We were ending a season but we stayed in gear to do this, kids had come back from earlier vacations to do it, and the Moores waved good-bye to the choir as the two busses left -- about the only time that I can think of that we have travelled in two long-distance busses. We wanted that many people to meet a President if they were willing to pick up the check. And Sunday morning after breakfast, when we got everybody packed up, the busses took off for Chicago and the Moores, in their car, took off for Colorado, and that was part of our vacation.

But the other element here was that it was a mixed weather day. I think there was some rain, which mercifully didn't come down when we had to sing and didn't interfere with really gathering a crowd. After the ceremonies, the choir had some time on its own and the choir took that little town of West Branch by storm. There were a couple of cafes deluged with people getting food, and the choir formed serenade groups on their own, undirected or self-directed from within, and there was one point where I was strolling around, relaxing, talking with people, and I could hear music coming from here, coming from there. The choir was having a good time doing its thing, and I had people come up to me deeply moved -- as moved or more moved by the choir's consistency of spirit left on their own -- the fact that they were doing, you know, under this tree serenading, in this rathskeller serenading, doing their thing without any adult supervision, without anybody calling the tunes, and they were on their own time and this was obviously their first love.

That made quite an impression on both local townspeople and other people visiting there for the ceremonies.

WTH: Without even a pitch pipe? Or would somebody be carrying a pitch pipe?

CM: I don't know whether anybody had a pitch pipe or not, but sometimes they'd just get a feel for about where it had to be.

WTH: Did that happen fairly often on tours? The opportunity presented itself for the kids with informal groups serenading?

CM: Often. I remember one day in Boston in the general period of the 70's somewhere and we had sung at First Church and we had a break for an hour or an hour and a half before we had to leave for wherever, and the next thing I knew, the gang was down in the public garden and they had gathered themselves quite a crowd because a group went down to see the swans and began singing, and away it went. There were was some of this even in Europe in special circumstances in 1970. It would happen more frequently on tours than anywhere else.