Chorus Candlelight Concert Report

I’m sitting alone in the front pew of the University of Virginia Chapel on a cold December night. In front of me there is a tall metal stand with a set of bongos perched precariously atop. Behind me sits the entire crowd of the sold out Virginia Women’s Chorus Candlelight Concert. When I arrived in Charlottesville months earlier, I could have never expected to be here. I have just finished performing a piece with the chorus minutes earlier, when a member of the chorus steps forward and addresses the audience to explain and introduce the next piece. The piece was “Song of the Universal” by Norwegian composer Ola Gjeilo. The piece is for chorus and accompanying piano and string quartet. The member introducing the piece notes that every person on stage, including the accompanying players and the conductor, are female to the audiences humored laughter. In fact, I was the only person to step on stage for the entire performance who was of the male gender. What does this mean, why is it special or uncanny for an entire ensemble to be made up of exclusively women? What does music do to change implications and assumptions on this matter? What are we expecting? This entire situation I found myself in seemed to be nothing more than a happy accident. KaeRenae Mitchell emailed me mid-semester to …show more content…
A study by Charles A. Elliot shows that gender indeed plays a role in the judgement of musical performances, relating instruments to perceived masculine/feminine associations (Elliot 53). While the study is somewhat different because it shows performances of instrumentalists, the same way of thinking can be applied. When an audience member sees an all-female chorus, they judge it differently than an all-male or integrated chorus. This is due to initial expectations that they believe will be fulfilled in the