Meet Jeffrey Carter: The New Artistic Director of the Gateway Men's Chorus
Meet Jeffrey Carter: The New Artistic Director of the Gateway Men’s Chorus
By: Joan Lipkin
It’s a big deal when a new artistic director comes to town. When the artistic director is Dr. Jeffrey Richard Carter and joins the Gateway Men’s Chorus, now in its 22nd season, it’s a very big deal. Carter’s considerable credentials include a Doctorate of Musical Arts degree in Choral Conducting from the University of Kansas, and a Master of Arts degree in Vocal Performance from the University of Central Missouri.
A native of Kansas City, he is a versatile conductor and teacher whose performance experience and training ranges through nearly 1,000 years of western musical tradition. He has had significant success with university ensembles, amateur choral groups, show choirs, volunteer church choirs, and festival choruses alike. His performing and educational endeavors have taken him to the continents of Asia, South America, and Europe, in addition to the continental United States.
Gateway Men’s Chorus aficionados and prospective audience members will have an opportunity to see Jeffrey Carter at work at his debut holiday concert "Peace on Earth" on December 12 and 13 at 8 p.m. at Union Avenue Christian Church (773 Union Blvd in the Central West End.) Tickets are available through www.gatewaymenschorus.org, Botanical Design Studio, Mokabe’s, Left Bank Books and at the door.
Gateway Men's Chorus
I sat down with Carter at the GALA Festival that we were both attending in Miami last summer. Clad in a blue tropical shirt in recognition of the tropics, Carter was warm, genial and focused.
What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation.
Joan Lipkin: Hi, Jeffrey. I want to welcome you to St. Louis except here we are in Miami.
(laughter)
So have you found a place to live?
Jeffrey Carter: Yes. I’m living right across from the Botanical Gardens by Tower Grove. And it’s wonderful.
JL: And as we say in the theatre world, do you have a day job?
(laughter)
JC: Yes, I’m the new department chair of the music department at Webster University. Most recently, I was associate director of the School of Music at Ball State University. After 30 years at the same school, doing some of the same stuff, it was time for me to look for something else and seek some greater challenges. So there were a number of music executive positions open this year, and I applied for them and I was one of the final candidates for the Webster chair. It just felt so good when I came for the interview that I turned down several other interviews.
JL: Really? Wow.
JC: It just felt like the right thing. I was worried about getting to do some music making, and the Gateway Men’s chorus position was open, and I applied and here I am.
JL: That’s fantastic. Isn’t it great when things work out that way? In the interest of disclosure, I understand your enthusiasm for Webster because I was Webster alum and I also used to teach at Webster. So that’s great. What will your responsibilities be at the music department? That’s a very big job.
JC: It is. The department chair for any academic institution is responsible for a number of areas, including anything having to do with personnel, student recruitments, curriculum development and funding—which is a whole separate area from budgeting, you know. So, the chair is responsible for the whole gamut of what would happen in any business, but is also responsible for recruiting new students and customers
And, you are responsible for what we call this big umbrella of curriculum development. What are we offering? How are we offering it? What do we need to be offering? How do we need to change? How do we need to grow?
You know, how does the university’s fine arts program stay relevant in the 21st century? Technology is exploding; students have more and more choices for how to listen to music, not necessarily just how to do music. These are all areas that I’ll be working with.
JL: That is a lot to take into consideration. And those are questions that many of us in the arts need to be asking ourselves. Webster has many different kinds of music offerings. They have classical music and they have voice, but they also have jazz.
JC: Yes, jazz is one of the big draws of Webster, one of the things we are best known for.
JL: Right.
JC: I’d say jazz and classical voice are probably the two big things that we’re respected for as an education school. We’re also respected for composition. There’s a small but steady music technology area.
JL: Yes. Webster is an active and happening place. Let’s talk a little about your interest in the Gateway Men’s Chorus. What did you do to audition?
JC: There was an interview process that I went through. I applied, the search committee sent me a list of questions and they asked me to respond within a certain number of days. Then around the first of April, they sent me an email saying you’re one of the people we’d like to invite in and they gave me several dates. And as it turns out, they interviewed all their finalists on the first Sunday in May. I came in and interviewed with the board and the search committee and a few others who were there. And I worked with them for about thirty minutes
JL: Did you actually do some conducting so they could see the way you work?
JC: Yes. And as it turns out, I had been to St. Louis for their March concert. I happened to be in town that weekend, having met with faculty and students from Webster for a couple of days and I spent that Saturday looking for someplace to live. And I went to the concert that night so I had seen the group in concert.
JL: Tell me a little more about the audition process.
JC: They had a piece of music they wanted me to work on and they also asked me to bring something. They wanted all this in thirty minutes: introduce yourself to the board, do some vocal exercises like you would do at the beginning of a rehearsal, work with the piece that we’ve sent you or any portion of that piece, and introduce a piece to us that contrasts with the piece we sent you. I had to do all of that in 30 minutes.
JL: No pressure there. That’s worse than taking the SATs.
(laughter)
JC: It was a bit of rush, yeah.
JL: What piece did they give you to work on?
JC: The final movement in "Naked Man." It’s a piece that’s often done at funerals of friends.
JL: I know that piece. It’s beautiful.
JC: Then the piece I brought was a novelty piece is called "Manly Men." We are men and we like to sing in close harmony.
(laughter)
JL: That sounds like fun. I love choral music but I know that not everybody appreciates its appeal or understands that there is a huge range of choral music out there. What is your attraction to choral music?
JC: What is a fish’s attraction to water? I mean, how do you define the attraction to choral music? It’s in your blood, you know?
JL: I do know.
(laughter)
JC: I remember singing before I remember playing any instruments. I remember wanting to sing before wanting to play piano or the French horn, which are my other two instruments.
I’ve been singing for as long as I can remember, and somewhere along the way I realized that helping others learn how to sing and sing together-- which is what choral singing is all about-- was going to be my life’s work. And so, here I am.
JL: I see. It is really special to sing with other people. The pleasure of being in the middle of joined sound is pretty heady. And I understand that you’ve also written choral music yourself. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
JC: I dabbled in composition. I wouldn’t say that I’m gifted in composition, but I have a particular voice that seems to work and to appeal to a certain clientele, which is namely Episcopal cathedrals. So my style is sort of a contemporary British style of cathedral music. Most of what I’ve done has been written for the Episcopal cathedral in Kansas City.
JL: I was looking at your website and reading some of your blogs---which are great by the way---and know that you served at your church. Do you have your eye on a particular congregation here in St. Louis?
JC: No, I think Webster and the Gateway Men’s Chorus are going to be enough for me for a while.
(laughter)
JL: I can imagine. At least for the moment. When you say that you’ve written choral music, and you’ve written predominantly for the Episcopal Church, you don’t mean lyrics, do you? You’re writing music?
JC: Yes, I’m writing music. The actual music in chorale itself.
But you know, in a very different vein, at Ball State University, one of my jobs was leading the Ball State University Singers, which is a song and dance group. Collegiate show choir. Think about the kind of thirty-minute show you’d be watching at Six Flags if you needed a break in the air conditioning.
(laughter)
Ball State University does that kind of performance for two hours. And a lot of the music that they were doing were things that I was arranging. So a growing interest of mine, for the past few years, is sort of commercial pop arrangements, or commercial Broadway arrangements.
JL: Taking existing material and then adapting it or writing new ones?
JC: Yes. I’m not a lyricist.
JL: Have you ever worked with a gay chorus before?
JC: I’ve sung with a gay chorus but I haven’t worked with a gay chorus in an artistic director position. My focus for the past 15 years in my career has been on church jobs and academic jobs.
JL: What chorus did you sing with?
JC: I sang with Heartland Chorus in Kansas City but that was some years ago.
JL: So, Jeffrey, we both have the good fortune to be here in Miami for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the GALA choruses. What are some of the particular challenges for a gay chorus in this day and age?
JC: Staying relevant is not a challenge at all, because I think gay choruses continue to find their own voice, whether that is in doing music that is specifically written to talk about our experience, or whether that is talking about, informing about and enlightening social discussions about the human condition.
However, there are several challenges. One of them is finding a way to continue to draw members when all performing arts organizations that are volunteer or amateur are struggling simply because of the huge multitude of other entertainment and other activity possibilities that are out there. So that’s a constant struggle. And it’s common to all of us.
JL: It is for those of us who work in the theatre, too.
JC: I also think one of the challenges that we face is finding music that appeals to a broad base. Often gay and lesbian choruses have to figure out, are we going to be a more "legitimate" chorus that happens to be made up of gay members? Or are we going to focus more on being one that entertains audiences in a more, for lack of a better word,"gay" fashion. Whether that’s drag or campiness or humor that’s specific to gay characters like something you would find on Logo or Bravo or even "Will & Grace;" we have to figure out who our audience is and how we draw in that audience. And that’s one of the big challenges for us in St Louis.
JL: Can you say a little bit more about that?
JC: My immediate impression has been that St. Louis is a metropolitan area that has an East Coast feel and yet also in some ways has a Midwestern sensibility. There’s some conservatism that runs in St. Louis that might not necessarily exist in the gay community in Chicago or Philadelphia or Boston, where there are larger choruses. Or San Francisco, Los Angeles or Seattle, which are three of the big choruses at this particular event.
I think we always have the challenge of seeking out people who need to be near the experience that gay choruses can offer, and letting them know in advance that this is a safe place for them. I think the Gateway Men’s Chorus is doing a good job of that. We need to get the word out more. We need to tell our story.
JL: I agree. It’s a story that needs to be heard more so more people understand what the chorus has to offer. Can you talk a little about your upcoming plans for this year? I understand you’ve actually already programmed the whole year.
JC: Well, it’s programmed in a sense that there are of lot of things. We have not programmed a lot of literature yet because this chorus has a tradition of being involved in recommending literature that’s going to be in the program. I want to honor that tradition and be part of that with them. But the holiday concert is always the holiday concert. The theme this year is "peace on earth." So it’s not always necessarily Christmas and Chanukah and Kwanzaa. It’s going to have some songs about peace as well.
The March concert is one that I picked the theme for, and the theme is "first crushes." We’re going to be celebrating the people on whom we first had crushes.
JL: What a great idea. Did you have a first musical crush?
JC: For me, it was Julie Andrews.
JL: You had a lot of company
(laughter)
JC: Yes. But whether the crushes were on Greg or Peter Brady or David Cassidy or Pat Boone, we’re going to celebrate these guys and these gals and do it through music.
I think there’s going be a lot of storytelling. But it’s going to be very poignant and funny as the guys narrate this concert and use it as the narrative structure to hold it together.
The final concert of the year is going to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riot which happened in 1969. We’re going to do a piece of music that was written for the 25th anniversary of Stonewall by Roger Borlind. He’s a composer out in Los Angeles and chairman of the UCLA music department. We’re going to do that for the first half of the concert. So it’s a more serious first half that honors the Stonewall anniversary. The second half is going to be high drama. Lots of laughs. Expect a liberal dose of Judy Garland.
JL: I’m always up for Judy.
JC: It’s around events that would have happened around 1969, or associated with 1969. So there will probably be some Beatles in there, too.
JL: This sounds like a great season. Thanks so much for giving us a sneak preview.
JC: It was a pleasure.
JL: We’ll see you at the show.
Joan Lipkin is the Artistic Director of That Uppity Theatre Company. She was the lyricist for "The Sage Cycle", music by Eric Lane Barnes, commissioned by the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus for performance at Lincoln Center. Most recently, she produced "Coming Out Stories 2008: Yours, Mine and Ours" at the Missouri History Museum as part of the St. Louis Political Theatre Festival.
Gateway Men’s Chorus 2008-09 Season
Peace On Earth
Union Avenue Christian Church
December 12 & 13, 2008
First Crushes
STLCC - Forest Park
March 27 & 28, 2009
Remembering Stonewall
Edison Theatre - June 19 & 20, 2009
