Musicians know that even when your big show already has been sold out for months, there’s always room for improvement.
All tickets for the Carroll County Community Chorus’ eagerly anticipated Christmas concert with the Carroll Symphony Orchestra were snatched up back in August, but the much-rehearsed ensemble had a rare opportunity last week to work under the baton of United Kingdom music icon Stephen Darlington, MBE.
The seeds were planted years ago when Terry Lowry, who directs both the chorus and the orchestra, was working on an Evensong service for the National Cathedral and reached out to Darlington for guidance.
“I sought out the very best in the world of English sacred music – in particular, Anglican church music,” Lowry said. “Dr. Darlington was very gracious and welcomed me onto the campus of Christ Church College at the University of Oxford, where he was the music director for many, many years.”
Lowry said he would show up at 7 a.m. and spend all day watching Darlington’s rehearsals with student and boy choirs as they practiced different repertoires for different services throughout the day.
“It was a wonderful opportunity for me to learn,” Lowry said.
He didn’t know at the time that he’d have a chance to facilitate a similar learning opportunity for the group of community singers he has directed for the past three years.
Lowry unexpectedly received an email from Darlington 15 years after the pair first met, saying he was traveling to the U.S. to tour as a guest lecturer and clinician and that he would like to visit Carrollton to hear Lowry’s chorus.
“He wrote, ‘Terry, you may not remember me, but this is Stephen Darlington,'” Lowry said. “I think I dropped my coffee when I read that – of course I remembered him! I have a shelf full of recordings by him and his choir, and all the textbooks he’s written.”
Darlington – the world-renowned, conductor, organist, musicologist, in-demand traveling lecturer, and Grammy-nominated recording artist who was awarded an MBE by the Queen of England in 2019 – hopped up on the stage at the Carrollton Center for the Arts during the chorus’ Oct. 20 rehearsal and got to work. With the chorus spread throughout the theatre’s seats, Darlington led the singers through the pieces they will perform not only at the International Vienna Advent Sing Chorus Festival in December but will also bring home to Carrollton to perform for the sold-out crowd.
As Lowry watched Darlington work with the chorus, he said he and his singers were “thrilled for the opportunity to have him come to Carrollton.
“What we’re learning right now, what this choir and this chorus is gaining from working with someone of this caliber – it’s just an extraordinary opportunity, and we’re grateful to him for his graciousness and his generosity and sharing his time with us.”
