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How Chalice Consort Began
Many, many days ago in a far away land discovered by Columbus in 1492 - which was during the Renaissance period before the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry the VIII - Rebekah woke up to her radio alarm at 7am on January 27th 2008, to Sacred Concerts on KDFC 102.1 (now 90.3). The pre-recorded Hoyt Smith announced a new release by the Huelgas Ensemble, and started playing the Missa Ave Maria by Thomas Ashwell (c. 1478 – after 1513 (possibly 1527?)). As usual, Rebekah snoozed through the first minute or so expecting to slowly wake up to the usual sweet, dulcet sound of renaissance ensembles, when she was abruptly awakened by a sudden full forte Gloria sung with immense vigor, “GRrrAtias Agimus TIbi PROPter MAGnum GLOriam TUam, DOmine DEus, rex coeLEStis, DEus PAter omnIpotens…”
The rhythm was so strikingly complex, and the ensemble seemed to be in such major organized chaos, that she could not snooze any longer. Rebekah jumped out of bed, and yelled “holy bleep!” and ran to the computer, and looked up the piece, and started the course of finding the score. The Berkeley Library didn’t have it, and no music library in the bay area had it. So, after many hours of googling, Rebekah found the coveted score sold by a company in the UK.
On March 5th, Rebekah started recruiting her friends to perform the Missa Ave Maria at the SFEMS Fringe Series on June 7th, 2008. And as usual when starting something new, she ran into some challenges such as when we found out it was really a SSAATTBB after staring at the score, rather than a SATTBB as it was marketed online, therefore was forced to scramble to find additional available singers. We ended up with one alto short due to a last minute laryngitis, so the sopranos, tenors, and even our interim director filled in as required. We were also unable to list our concert as part of SFEMS Fringe Series because the ending time of our concert “conflicted” with the starting time of the well marketed Alessandro Striggio concert hosted by the Berkeley Festival & Exhibition, discovered by Davitt Moroney.
We successfully debuted in front of a packed house at St. Joseph of Arimathea in Berkeley California.
The name Chalice Consort came to existence when Kaneez Munjee and Rebekah were trying to come up with a better name than the original Berkeley Renaissance Soloists. While talking to Kaneez on the phone discussing various potential names, Rebekah was flipping through the Chivalry Sports catalogue from the online Renaissance Store. She saw the chalice and said, “how about chalice?” To which Kaneez replied, “that’s a pretty name”, and asked, “should we call it Chalice Ensemble?” To which Rebekah replied, “how about Chalice Consort?” And, thus our name came to be. This process took about half an hour over tons of laughter over some potential names.
We had a lot riding on the success of our debut concert. Paul Kim, our fearless Interim Director was leaving to expand his knowledge in mid-July to another far away land discovered and originally inhabited by the Celts. And Paul Ellison, then potential director candidate, was coming to check us out to see if he would take us on to put Chalice Consort on the early music map in the bay area. We were elated when he said “yes” right after the concert! This concert was an epoch in our ensemble's new life! And, most of us celebrated our success after the concert at a Thai restaurant nearby, while others ran to sing the Striggio.
However, when Paul Ellison came back from the UK that August, he realized he could not take on Chalice Consort that season. So, we were back on a search again in mid-August for an Interim Director for the 2008-2009 season, with auditions scheduled for September the 7th.
Paul gave a few recommendations, and Rebekah reached out to all of them, and one of the directors that responded was Matt Walsh. He kindly expressed his interest. They met. They liked each other’s energies. Matt met with a couple more founding members. The process took a couple weeks and he agreed to become our Interim Director just in time for our already scheduled auditions. Whew!
Chalice Consort successfully completed our inaugural season under the direction of Matt Walsh. We were honored to have been reviewed twice that season by San Francisco Classical Voice. You can read the reviews here.
Chalice Consort: 2008-2009
Back row (clockwise): Matt Walsh, Owen Smith, Adam Cole, Carl Boe, Verah Graham, Andy Kline
Center: David Sironen, Josh Black, Asher Davison, Jeff Phillips, Lindasusan Ulrich, Athena Kirk
Front: Kaneez Munjee, Cecilia Lam, Rebekah Wu, Mickey Butts and Jennifer Owen
After the 2008-2009 season, Rebekah had dinner with Davitt Moroney at the lovely Citron Restaurant (now closed) in Rockridge regarding the Early Music Mining Conference (now called Chalice Consort Early Music Conference) and his role as moderator of the all-star panel of luminary early music directors from the UK, and as guest director. Before they closed down the restaurant after a delicious 4-course meal complemented with a couple glasses of red wine each, and over a teapot of Earl Grey for Davitt and a hot cup of house coffee for Rebekah, Rebekah handed Davitt a demo CD created from a collection of live concert recordings from the inaugural season. As she quietly slid the CD across the table, she looked at him straight in the eyes, and without blinking asked him if he would consider guest directing the Chalice Consort for the November 2009 concert with the possibility of the "beyond". Rebekah saw a glimmer of interest in Davitt's eyes, and the rest is history in the making!
We are ecstatic and honored to be making music with Davitt Moroney!
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