Chains of Inspiration with Tom Morgan | Ars Nova Singers
Ars Nova Singers is an auditioned vocal ensemble specializing in a cappella music of the Renaissance and the 20th/21st centuries. Since its founding in 1986, this Denver Metro Area icon has been recognized as one of the nation’s most intrepid professional choirs, bringing together 40 gifted vocalists to tackle challenging, time-traveling works that stretch the boundaries of sound and spirit.
You founded Ars Nova Singers in 1986, here we are nearly 40 years later, and the choir is thriving and stronger than ever. What led you to create Ars Nova, and what makes it unique to other choirs in the Denver Metro area?
The co-founder of Ars Nova Singers is a longtime friend and Boulder alto Amy French. She and I sang together in the Boulder Bach Festival chorus in the “Bach 300” year of 1985 (300th anniversary of his birth). In discussing the local/regional choral scene at the time, we identified the possibility of creating a new selectively auditioned ensemble and performing repertoire largely OUTSIDE of what other groups were doing. I was completing my master’s degree in music composition at the time, so I’ve always been interested in contemporary music; my other areas of particular interest were medieval and Renaissance music. So the name “Ars Nova Singers” (“new art” in Latin) came to the fore as a possibility, as it addresses both of these areas of interest. The term ‘ars nova’ is used by musicologists to describe an area of music that started in the 14th century (with polyphonic music and more complex rhythms than plainsong). The term of course also refers to new music, which continues to play a central role in our mission and repertoire.
Another way in which Ars Nova Singers is fairly unique in the region is that we have two full-time staff positions: Artistic Director and Executive Director. We also have a part-time marketing person, and a staff presently of 15 professional singers (out of our 44-voice regular ensemble). This greatly assists in implementing our mission and vision.
How do you continue to produce unique concert seasons year over year? What motivates and inspires you?
I feel we have to keep stretching ourselves, both artistically and conceptually, in this rapidly more interconnected larger world. Audiences and listeners have access to SO much more high-quality content from around the globe.
On the other side of the coin: there’s still nothing that can compare to the in-person, in-community experience of live performance, and very few art forms can convey the depth and expression possible by the human voice.
So, it’s inspiring to me to make this connection.
My other major motivation is finding inspiring collaborations. Looking back at the last couple of decades in particular, this has encompassed a really BROAD range: from a bluegrass band to a saxophone quartet, from a Grammy-winning solo cellist to (currently) to an amazing virtuoso pianist, from string orchestra to solo guitar. Equally inspiring have been collaborations across disciplines: dance, literature, visual art, and theatre; even earlier this season with the Aspen Historical Society.
Are there any performances or projects that have been particularly important or special to you?
Our Shared Visions project stands out as among the most meaningful and satisfying of our projects, so much so that we’ve decided to undertake it every two years. The idea is to create several ‘chains of inspiration’ across disciplines, using Colorado artists, and culminating in the creation and performance of new choral works.
For example, our current “Shared Visions 4” project launches this year. This spring we will identify 8 Colorado visual artists and each of these will select up to three works they’d like to submit for an online art gallery that will be available for 3 months this summer. The gallery is made available for Colorado poets and writers, who then look through the artworks and create new poetry based on what inspires them. In the early fall, we will gather all of this poetry into an anthology (along with the associated artworks), and give this to four Colorado composers. The composers will then select what inspires THEM from the available works and create new music for voices.
In Spring of 2026, our choir will rehearse and perform these works. At the performance, we gather all the artists together: the visual art is projected, the poets read their works, and the choir performs the pieces. It’s hard to describe the gratification, validation, and connection this provides to all involved. it seems especially impactful to the visual artists; they could not have imagined – when sitting alone in their studios creating the visual art – that some day in the future people would SING this piece.
Is there one choral piece that you could listen to over and over again?
One of the pieces we’ve performed the most is Thomas Tallis’ 40-voice motet “Spem in alium.” I love most multi-divisi works, as there are almost always new connections to find, new things to hear.
Is there anything you haven’t done that’s on your repertoire wish list?
I’m happy to say that my ‘wish list’ is still pretty extensive and is expanding, as I learn and connect with more composers all over the world. I also frequently ask composers if there is a work or two in their catalog that they really believe in that hasn’t gotten the exposure they feel it deserves. That’s a place to find some gems, for sure.
Talk to me about your upcoming concert Lost/Found. What should audiences know and what makes this a must “hear.”
Granados’ “Cant de les Estrelles” is a masterpiece with a fascinating and complex history. Granados completed writing it and presented the premiere in Barcelona in March of 1911, playing the quite challenging piano part himself. After the premiere, the score sat on his shelf until he died 5 years later (drowned in the English Channel after a German submarine attack in World War 1). The piece remained in his family archive until 1938 when his son Victor brought it (and other works, published and unpublished) to New York. But Victor was not the sole heir to his father’s music and was not authorized to have it published in the US. This, and the intervention of World War 2, meant the works languished unseen and unheard for yet more years. In 1964 the archive in which they were stored was damaged by fire and most of the pieces were feared to be lost. In 2004, an agreement was finally reached. Despite fire, water, and mold damage, the “Song of the Stars” was able to be restored.
Like many others, I first became of aware of this piece in 2007, when it was resurrected by the contemporary pianist Douglas Riva, and performed in New York by my friend and colleague Dennis Keane with his professional choir, Voices of Ascension. They recorded their performance and it was subsequently released on CD and then nominated for a Grammy award, which brought the piece much larger exposure. Riva has described the piece as “comparable to a piano concerto with chorus and organ rather than an orchestra.”
Dominick Argento’s “Peter Quince at the Clavier” is a piece I’ve always wanted to do, despite its fairly high degree of difficulty for the choir. The poetry (by Wallace Stevens) is so deep and multilayered, and Argento’s musical setting is profound.
It’s been VERY rare for Ars Nova Singers to perform with piano accompaniment. Mostly this has been due to the fact that we frequently present our concerts in a variety of locations, and sometimes it’s difficult to ensure that there is a quality well-tuned piano available. Also, voices naturally gravitate toward a tuning system called “just intonation” while the piano is tuned in “equal temperament.” It’s a subtle difference, but it’s a sound world that we prefer to inhabit.
But then came the opportunity to collaborate with David Korevaar, a brilliant virtuoso pianist, and this brought in another factor: in MANY accompanied choral works, the piano parts are just supportive of the choir; they don’t stand out as particularly challenging or creatively written for the piano. So, my challenge in this program was to find choral pieces with piano writing WORTHY of a virtuoso such as David. Each piece of the program accomplishes this magnificently!
What do you want your legacy to be? What’s the mark you hope to leave on this world?
Thanks to a very generous main donor and a successful Endowment campaign, Ars Nova Singers made my position full-time in July of 2021. I’m ecstatic to be able to focus my efforts and energy exclusively on this mission for the remainder of my professional career AND someday to be a part of turning over the dream and the mission to a new generation of choral musicians. Ars Nova Singers WILL survive and flourish beyond my tenure as Artistic Director; that’s a very rare thing in the choral world, and I’m grateful for this to be my legacy.
We plan, gather, prepare, invest, organize, strategize, prioritize, and rehearse, in order to send the vibrations we create into the world. Sometimes they come back to us, in unexpected, beautiful ways.
The poem below was written by one of our patrons after our performance in Longmont in December.
it is enough
I have discovered it is enough when a single note is beautifully played. ...the melody and accompanying voice...is one. One and one is one, it is not two.
– Estonian composer Arvo Part
across the Atlantic seven hundred years ago
in late medieval France an ars nova evolved
a new art of polyphonic rhythms and rounds
a cappella motets based on sacred texts
and now listeners gather in this long night
for Ars Nova for choral beauty ineffable
our spirits like prisms drawing forth
notes of every color played within white light
conductor’s hands rise draw forth
notes like bells chords like chorus
celestial like waves from the sea
to our shore
as a circle of singers surround us
submerge us in oceans of music wonder
I remember that seven hundred years ago
a poet in Persia yearned to speak like music
I wish I could put the swaying splendor
of fields into words, wrote Hafiz,
so that you could hold Truth
in our program of light through shadows
dispelling darkness benevolent beams shafts
of precision through murmuring forests of druids
are stories of music love of sounds sublime
Music... uplifts sad minds... moves the very trees
someone wrote five centuries ago yes and yes
as voices join successively as if a spiral
The storm is coming soon we are reminded
My words will be the light to carry you to me
all one together harmonies rise once again
ephemeral eternal ethereal
She sings and sings knowing she has wings
treble and tenor synergies slip into silence
is love alive? is love alive?
yes and yes our voices sing again
canons of carols through holy time
tears emerge in beauty
from unseen wells of thanksgiving
doors open the moon is full
it is enough
– fran hamilton
December 14, 2024
Learn more about Ars Nova Singers and join them for their next performance Lost/Found February 7th & 8th