Duain Wolfe Interview with Bruce Duffie . . . . . . . . .

Choral Conductor Duain Wolfe

A Conversation with Bruce Duffie

A. Duain Wolfe (born 24 October 1945, Hammond, Louisiana) is an American choral conductor, conductor of the Colorado Symphony Chorus and the Colorado Children's Chorale. He is the former chorus director and conductor of the Chicago Symphony Chorus (1994-2022) and a past president of Chorus America.

Alvin Duain Wolfe earned his BM from Southeastern Louisiana University in 1966 and master's degree from the University of North Texas College of Music completing his thesis on Nineteenth-century New Orleans composers, published by the University in 1968.

Beginning in the early 1970s, Wolfe served as chorus master and a staff conductor at Central City Opera Festival, working closely with conductor John Moriarty. He also served the organization in various administrative capacities, maintaining a twenty-year relationship with the festival.

As a conductor at Central City, Wolfe was responsible for establishing a children's choral ensemble for a 1974 production of Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream. With this group of singers he founded the Colorado Children's Chorale, a youth choir based in Denver, Colorado. Under Wolfe's leadership and preparation, the group achieved national recognition, appearing on NBC’s Today Show, CBS Christmas specials and BBC broadcasts of The Proms at Royal Albert Hall with the BBC Orchestra and Chorus of Wales. Other performances have included collaborations with Opera Colorado, Colorado Ballet, Opera Omaha, Toledo Opera, the Grand Teton Music Festival and the Aspen Music Festival, where they sang the children's chorus in a 1994 performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 8, in addition to appearances with many famous classical and popular musicians. He retired as Artistic Director of the Colorado Children's Chorale in 1999.

In 1984 Wolfe was asked by Denver Symphony Orchestra conductor Gaetano Delogu (later principal conductor of the Prague Symphony Orchestra) to form a symphony chorus. He founded the Colorado Symphony Chorus, which he has led under symphony conductors Delogu, Philippe Entremont, Marin Alsop and Jeffrey Kahane, in addition to other engagements such as the chorus' annual appearances at the Aspen Music Festival.

In 1994, Wolfe was chosen by music director Daniel Barenboim to succeed Margaret Hillis as director of the Chicago Symphony Chorus. Only the second individual to hold the position, Wolfe has prepared the Chorus for over one hundred performances, including a Grammy Award–winning recording of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg with Sir Georg Solti in 1998, and a Carnegie Hall performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Staatskapelle Berlin under Barenboim in 2000. Under Wolfe's leadership, the Chicago Symphony Chorus won a 2010 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance (the ensemble's tenth award in that category since 1977) for Verdi's Messa da Requiem under the baton of music director Riccardo Muti. The recording also won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Album. He retired from this position at the end of February 2022 with a performance of Beethoven's Ninth.

Among his many awards, Wolfe won the 1987 Mayor's Awards for Excellence in the Arts from the City and County of Denver. The Colorado Children's Chorale and Wolfe received a Governor's Arts Award from the Colorado Council on the Arts in 1999. In 2001, Wolfe received a Bonfils-Stanton Foundation Award. The prize is often considered Colorado’s most prestigious prize for accomplishment in the Arts and Humanities, Community Service, and Science and Medicine. In 2012, Chorus America awarded Wolfe the Michael Korn Founders Award for Development of the Professional Choral Art, given annually to a conductor in recognition of "a lifetime of significant contributions to the professional choral art."

== Names which are links in this box and below refer to my interviews elsewhere on my website. BD

In March of 2001, I had the pleasure of meeting with Duain Wolfe, the Conductor of the Chicago Symphony Chorus. Within the depth of knowledge he shared, there was much laughter about the situations and circumstances surrounding the day-to-day world of a top musician.

As we were setting up to record our conversation, the chit-chat centered on his office requirements . . . . .

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Bruce Duffie:   I take it you don’t like meetings and computers. You’d rather just be doing music?

Duain Wolfe: Absolutely! That’s the best part! [Both laugh]

BD:   Is there any way to do your job without the meetings and the computers?

Wolfe: Not anymore. Computers have taken over our lives! [Remember, this interview took place in March of 2001.] There’s no way to get around it. I only came into the computer age a couple of years ago kicking and screaming. I figured out I’d better learn something about technology before the twentieth century was over. I just barely made it! [More laughter] I’m finally fluent with email and word processing, and that’s about it. Anything more sophisticated than that, somebody has to show me.

BD:   [With a wink] Are you completely literate and sufficiently learnèd in music?

Wolfe: [Smiles] I hope so, at least for what I need to be doing.

BD:   Do you only want to go in music as far as you need to, or do you want to learn even more?

Wolfe: Oh, much more! The great thing about music is that it’s just stimulating your entire life. You get to middle-age and you’re doing all this wonderful music, and you think that you know this level right now, so what in the world did I know when I was twenty-five? It must have been absolutely nothing. Then I think that maybe when I hit seventy-five, it’s going to be even worse. I look back at fifty and wonder what in the world did I know then?

BD:   So, there’s always something new?

Wolfe: There’s always something, and it seems like it’s always great leaps. Even when you work on something like the Verdi Requiem, which we’ve done numerous times, every time you do it, you make this huge leap of informed understanding musicality about what you’re involved in. Then again, you wonder what was it three productions ago if I know this much more about it now?

BD:   Each time you come to a set of performances, in this case the Verdi, do you get a clean score and start over, or do you build on what you learned before?

Wolfe: Actually, I do both. I have a clean score, but I also keep a score that has other conductors’ notes. To anything I’m working on, I like to bring the experience I’ve had by working with others, especially great conductors of the world with whom I’m in a position to be working. So it would be silly for me to be starting over each time. But I also have a clean score that I look at to make sure that I’m seeing something fresh each time.

BD:   As the chorus master you are in a very peculiar position, because you have to prepare the works to a certain extent, and yet not interfere by bringing your own style to it. Is that difficult?

Wolfe: In some ways, yes, but in other ways it’s not so hard, because being true to the composer is my job, and that’s also the conductor’s job. I’m careful not to do anything I don’t think the composer would have wanted. Occasionally I do things, such as articulation, which is so difficult with a large group. I will curb something, or will modify something, or expand something that the composer has done. In other words, I may take a note that’s being held just a fraction longer just to get that final consonant to be brilliant and rhythmic.

BD:   You’re doing that for clarity?

Wolfe: I’m doing that for clarity. That has nothing to do with trying to change the composer’s intent. We’re dependent on interpreting notation, and notation is simply an idea of what the composer wanted. There’s nobody who can write down exactly one way to do something.

BD:   I assume there is no one way to do any piece of music?

Wolfe: Exactly! If there were, we would have been finished with music a long time ago, and just be nothing but automatons repeating everything!

BD:   If you are the final conductor, would you prepare it any differently?

Wolfe: Most of the time, no. Most of the time I’m in a position where I know the conductors I’m preparing for, or I know their style if I don’t actually know those conductors. I have an idea of what should happen in order to present them with a product that makes it possible for them to do their best, and to put their mark on it. But you’re right, we chorus directors are in a very unusual situation.

BD:   Are there times when you are the final conductor, and then you can put your stamp on it?
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Wolfe: Yes, and absolutely, I do.

BD:   Is that more liberating?

Wolfe: Well, it’s easier, and it certainly is more liberating. Everyone smiles when I’m preparing something I know I’m going to be conducting. I can just tell the chorus that this is the answer, whereas lots of times I’m saying that the conductor may want to do this way, or maybe that way, so be prepared for it. Sometimes I have to prepare them both ways. We do Plan A, and then we do Plan B, because we don’t know which one he’s going to go with. But when I’m conducting, I find that I surprise myself when I can make that decision. It’s going to be Plan A! [Much laughter] That’s kind of fun.

BD:   Do you ever discuss with the conductor beforehand the kinds of things he or she will want?

Wolfe: Sometimes, but not all the time. It’s not standard operational procedure that I work with a conductor in advance on a specific score. Usually I see them for the first time at the same time the chorus does, which is at the piano-conductor rehearsal. But sometimes, if there’s something unusual about a piece, or if it’s new, we’ll make a point of my being able to work with the conductor. For instance, when we did Moses und Aron, I did work with Pierre Boulez in advance on that. When we did Die Meistersinger, I worked with Georg Solti in advance. Because we were recording it, we wanted to make sure that we wouldn’t lose any time. Also, because it’s opera it tends to have more elasticity in terms of interpretation. But most of the time, I don’t work with the conductor in advance. [Vis-à-vis the recording shown at left, see my interviews with José van Dam and Karita Mattila.]

BD:   This brings me to one of my favorite questions. Is the Requiem Verdi’s greatest opera?

Wolfe: It certainly is! It definitely is an opera, right there along with the rest of them.

BD:   Is it a sacred opera?

Wolfe: I think so. It’s very impassioned. There’s no doubt that it’s an impassioned religious statement of Verdi. It’s very much his feelings and emotions about these texts, and the emotions are very clear. It’s a powerful statement that he’s made.

BD:   Is it his view of spirituality?

Wolfe: Oh, I think so. Every note of it expresses his view. [Laughs] I didn’t know the guy personally so how would I really know? But everything about it is so direct and so clear about this statement. There’s no doubt where he’s going with Lacrimosa. The pleading and the sentiment is profound to mourning. To me, one page after another tells us something about what Verdi thought about this moment of theology. Whether anybody else agrees with it or not, it’s no doubt what he was saying. Dies Irae is powerful, and exciting. ‘Thrilling’ is the wrong word, because there’s hardly a thrill in that text which has a certain horror in it.

BD:   But we are thrilled by the music.

Wolfe: Absolutely! The music is really, really thrilling. There’s no doubt about it.

BD:   You say you didn’t know him personally. Are you not getting to know him personally by delving into his scores?

Wolfe: You feel like you are. Sometimes when we feel like we get to know a composer really well, we even seem to be invading a certain privacy by knowing their music. Even so, there’s a certain remoteness because I never have felt like I could presume to say that I knew a composer well enough to know what his reaction would be to anything. I don’t know what he had for breakfast the day he was writing it, or anything of those sorts of things.

BD:   Do we need to know those details?

Wolfe: We don’t need to know them. The composers have given us a statement that stands by itself, and I don’t need to know the composer any better than that.

* * * * *

BD: You don’t need to mention names, but is it easier or better to work with great composers as opposed to lesser composers?
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Wolfe: Infinitely easier! If it’s not great music, it’s really horrid. It’s so funny! There are things that are very difficult to rehearse because they’re so powerful and so moving. I find passages in this Verdi very, very hard to rehearse just because you’re immediately enveloped in the emotion.

BD:   Do you get choked up?

Wolfe: I get choked up.

BD:   Does the chorus get choked up?

Wolfe: Exactly, and you have to back up and make yourself take it apart technically, and really become quite boring with it so that you are accurate about it. On the other hand, if you’re working with lesser quality music by composers that don’t have this craftsmanship or this artistry but still might have a wonderful thing to say at times, it’s hard to work on just because there’s nothing in there to work on.

BD:   You have to search for the nuggets of beauty?

Wolfe: You really do! You really have to search. We just make sure it’s accurate and technically correct so that we can get to the special parts of it.

BD:   I hope you don’t have to do that too often.

Wolfe: Very rarely, especially with the Chicago Symphony Chorus, because we do great music all the time.

BD:   Is it assumed that the Chicago Symphony Chorus will only do great music?

Wolfe: Of course! That’s an assumption which we make. It’s so funny... every once in a while we talk about a piece that isn’t a masterpiece, but it’s because on a scale of one to ten, we’re working with nines, tens, and elevens all the time. Sometimes other organizations are working with pieces where the quality of the music is three or four or five.

BD:   If you’re working with a piece that’s a nine, is it your responsibility to get it up there to be ten?

Wolfe: Oh, yes. You’ve got to make it sound like a ten every time. But that’s part of the excitement of working with an orchestra like this. We can turn things into ten.

BD:   Is that too much pressure on you to always produce the best, and to be perfect?

Wolfe: It’s a great deal of pressure, but it’s not too much pressure, because that’s what is asked of all of us anyway. In anything we do in life, that’s where we should be aiming. Any human being should be doing that, so that is the innate pressure in what we do. It can be scary to have to come through each time, because our feeling is that it’s what we want to produce every single time. You don’t just produce it eighty percent of the time. You want it to be right every single time. It’s like the pressure to bowl 300 every time.
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BD: [Gently protesting] But in sports, you can measure something. In art, you can’t really measure it. It’s just a feeling.

Wolfe: Yes, but the part you can be objective about is the accuracy of what you’re doing. You know whether you really are getting the right notes, and singing in tune, and if the rhythms are accurate. That part is objective.

BD: I assume that’s the starting point, rather than the end point?

Wolfe: Exactly! After that, it all becomes subjective, and lots of times it’s a matter of personal taste regarding what this artist does which is different from that artist, which is different from yet another artist. All three of them may be equally wonderful, and all three of them may be tens, but they will all be very, very different. One segment of the audience likes Artist A, and another segment likes Artist B, and sometimes it just becomes silly about splitting hairs as to which one is best and which is not. I find that counterproductive. Why go into all that? If someone really is giving us the artistry of a piece, then we’re just pretty damn lucky.

BD:   I never put value judgments on whether someone is better or worse, just whether they do a satisfying job.

Wolfe: Right, and does it move your soul? If you leave a performance feeling like you have been enriched in an important way, then it’s been absolutely worthwhile to be there. If you leave a performance not quite sure why you were there, that’s a whole other subject. [Vis-à-vis the recording shown at left, see my interview with Bernard Haitink.]

BD:   Then is it your fault, or the composer’s fault, or the audience’s fault for falling asleep?

Wolfe: Who knows? Any one of those elements, or various combinations might make the whole impression. Sometimes you just had too big a dinner right before you went to the performance, and you’re physically not prepared to be there. Then it’s your fault. It can be the best performance in the world, and you fall asleep because of that big meal. These are extra agenda items. We have lots of stuff going on at a performance. We have the audience and their health and frame of mind, and everybody’s physicality on stage, plus what the composer has offered. Then there is what the performers have in terms of being able to interpret to realize what the composer has offered. [Sighs] It’s a wonder we can ever get anything done!

BD:   Is there ever a night that it’s all done just right?

Wolfe: Absolutely! Every Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. [Both laugh] You don’t think I’m going to be bad-mouthing the company line, do you? [More laughter]

BD:   But your ultimate company line is the composer?

Wolfe: Yes, absolutely!

BD:   Good, but that’s what the CSO [Chicago Symphony Orchestra] company expects.

Wolfe: And rightly so.

* * * * *

BD: Coming back to the Requiem, did Verdi write well for the voice?

Wolfe: Oh yes, very beautifully. It’s not always easy, and some people equate writing well with it being easy to sing, but those are two different things. Verdi was uncanny with his ability to write melodies that work in the voice, and harmonies for chorus and orchestras which make such vertical and structural sense that they’re easily produced once you’ve figured out what they are. He can get really chromatic, like in the Ave Maria of the Four Sacred Pieces. It has absolutely startling harmonies at times that you simply do not expect to take place, which is one reason why he’s such a great composer. He stretches your notion like great visual artists, painters and sculptors, who make you think of a flower differently. It’s like you’d never thought of a flower before by the way they paint it, and Verdi does that with his melodies and harmonies.

BD: The Requiem is a fairly late piece. Are the Four Sacred Pieces also late?

Wolfe: They’re scattered.

The Quattro pezzi sacri (Four Sacred Pieces) are choral works by Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901). Written separately during the last decades of the composer's life, and with different origins and purposes, they were nevertheless published together in 1898 by Casa Ricordi. They are often performed as a cycle, not in chronological sequence of their composition, but in the sequence used in the Ricordi publication:

Ave Maria, a setting of the Latin Ave Maria for four solo voices a cappella composed in 1889
Stabat Mater, a setting of the Latin Stabat Mater for chorus and orchestra composed in 1896 and 1897
Laudi alla Vergine Maria, a setting of a prayer in Canto XXXIII of Dante's Paradiso for four female voices a cappella composed between 1886 and 1888
Te Deum, a setting of the Latin Te Deum for double chorus and orchestra composed in 1895 and 1896.

As a reference, the dates of his last major works and revisions are: Aïda (1871), Don Carlo revisions (1872, 1884, 1886), Requiem (1874), Simon Boccanegra revision (1886), Otello (1887), Falstaff (1893).

BD: Is it especially interesting for you to do the Requiem and the Four Sacred Pieces together?

Wolfe: You don’t always get to do the Four Sacred Pieces together. They are four pieces written at different times, and put into a collection. Many times I’ve done the Te Deum all by itself. It’s a wonderful season opener, or festival piece. The Ave Maria, on the other hand, is absolutely a cappella, which presents a totally different mentality. It’s very beautiful, with a different sonority. This is a very exciting time for us because we do the Requiem one night, and the Four Sacred Pieces the next, and repeat that sequence. It’s just one major excitement after another, and in many ways the Four Sacred Pieces are harder than the Requiem for the chorus because they don’t stop singing. In the Requiem, it’s five or six minutes for each solo, and there are four soloists. So during that time there are breaks, and there is time to breathe. In the Four Sacred Pieces, they start at the beginning, and forty minutes later they’re finished, and they haven’t stopped, except occasionally in the Te Deum the orchestra plays for three bars without them! [Both laugh]
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BD:   Is that something you’ve got to be very conscious of when you’re working with the chorus, how much each individual voice and collectively all the voices can take?

Wolfe: Exactly, and the rehearsals last three hours, so you have to modulate the work in such a way that the voices don’t wear out too soon. To that extent, I have the singers ‘mark’ their voices to save them, and sometimes just speak the words in rhythm when we’re working on the text, so they’re not projecting that much sound all the time. Sometimes I will ask them to sing very softly, and take the words away and sing just on syllables. That’s another way to save your voices, by using syllables that fit nicely into your vocal mechanism.

BD:   Lots of big open vowels?

Wolfe: Exactly, or sometimes when it’s very light, we use some really tiny, almost closed-mouth things. So there are lots of different ways to help with that, because the rehearsals can be grueling in that respect. They can become exhausted by two, or two-and-a-half hours of rehearsal, so I say to them that the good news is at the performance we only do this once! [Both laugh] But that’s also the bad news, because you only get one try at it. Of course, by the time we get to the performance we’ve rehearsed it and can get it right at the first go.

BD:   Occasionally a solo singer might make a big gaff. Are there ever times when the chorus will make a big gaff?

Wolfe: This chorus???

BD:   Well... any chorus.

Wolfe: There are times when you live with your heart in your throat, because there can be some very difficult passages. So yes, it is possible for a chorus to make a big gaff. Think about a cappella passages, for instance, that may go on for several minutes. There was one in the Penderecki Seven Gates of Jerusalem [Seventh Symphony] that we did last year.

BD:   You have to make sure the pitch doesn’t sag.

Wolfe: Exactly! There was a movement that was six and a half minutes long for three choruses, and twelve to sixteen parts going on simultaneously. It was extremely chromatic, and they were descending chromatics, which is the hardest thing to keep in tune. You’ve just got your heart in your throat for six and a half minutes. By the time we got to the performance, my heart wasn’t quite in my throat, because we had done it in tune so many times that I wasn’t worried anymore. But that’s the trickiest thing for a chorus to have to do, and it can be pretty scary. Then there are always the moments that you worry about, such as where it seems like the chorus ought to come in, but they aren’t supposed to. There is the big moment of the Beethoven Ninth where the trombones come in a beat earlier than the chorus. You have got to be really careful. It’s just terrifying. All it takes is one person up there to take that trombone cue as the chorus cue, and then you’ve had it. There are lots of little pitfalls like that through the repertoire where something could go terribly wrong, but most of the time you don’t worry because when those things exist, you just rehearse it over and over until the performance time. Then there is the fugue right smack in the middle of it, which lasts maybe a minute, and it takes as much rehearsal as the rest of the piece put together.

* * * * *

BD: What do you expect out of each and every choral singer that you have?

Wolfe: Dead-on accuracy, and an incredible concentration on what the conductor is doing. The accuracy part we can work on in rehearsals, but the connection with the conductor is actually harder, because they don’t get to work very much with the conductor... unless it’s something that I’m conducting, in which they get to work with me over and over. But most of the time, they only get to work with the conductor two or three times before the performance, so you really are dependent on the chorus members having a significant connection with a conductor, and being very, very alert to everything he’s doing.

BD: You mentioned that they’ll meet the conductor at the piano rehearsal, and then have a couple more rehearsals. Do they get to work with you alone after they’ve met the conductor, or once the conductor comes in, it’s the conductor’s fault completely?

Wolfe: It’s the conductor’s challenge. [Laughs] I work with them again in warm-ups before the performance. The way the system works, we call it a CPR, a conductor-piano rehearsal, which is a really an apt term! [Both laugh at the pun, which usually refers to cardiopulmonary resuscitation.] We do the CPR, and then the next two or three rehearsals are with orchestra. The next time I see them is in the warm-up before they go on stage for the first performance.
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BD:   Is there anything you can do then, or is it just get the throats warmed up?

Wolfe: They’re professional singers, so they come with their throats already warmed up. My warm-ups before performances have two purposes. One is not to warm up their voices because that’s their job, but to tune them as an ensemble, and to make sure that it all just really clicks, like the orchestra tunes right before the conductor comes out. A chorus needs to do that too, just to get the ears going, and so their instruments are ready.

BD:   You’re focusing their brains?

Wolfe: Exactly, and getting their voices to come together so they hear each other and can get that blend back in. The other real point of my warm-ups is to hit all the tricky licks through the piece that you worry about. This is just like a concerto player before going out on stage. Inevitably they go through the hardest passages of the concerto, and also work on the cadenza. I do the same thing with the entire chorus right before they go out, so that those are fresh and sharply tuned.

BD:   Do you look at the chorus as an instrument, or as a group of instruments?

Wolfe: That’s a very good question, because actually I think of them both ways. To me they are a group of instruments in the very best way. I have a slightly different philosophy about this than a lot of chorus directors. To me, the chorus is like an orchestra. The beauty of an orchestra is all of those different sounds that come together with different colors. That’s what makes a remarkable instrument called the orchestra, and I like the fact that we have lots of different sounds in the chorus. Some chorus directors want all the voices to sound the same, and they work very hard in auditions to get everybody to have the same sound. They just let people in that have the same vocal color and the same everything about each other, so that they blend in an absolutely unanimous way. I like different vocal colors to come together. It makes a richer and more exciting sound, just like the orchestra has. To that end, I view them as a group of many different instruments. But just like the orchestra, ultimately it projects itself as one instrumental statement. So in that case it is one instrument.

BD:   What does it take to be a good choral singer, and how much is that different from being a good solo singer?

Wolfe: [He thinks] In most ways it’s harder to be a good chorister or chorus singer, because the chorus singer has to start out by being a good vocal soloist. They have to be really secure in vocal technique, so if they have that down pat, then they also have to have the elements of artistry that soloists have. Then, beyond that they have to be able to temper themselves to be part of an important ensemble, and that is just hard as the dickens. What I have found is that inevitably the singers who make the best chorus members are singers who are solid and confident soloists, and can make that very difficult bridge to being a significant member of an ensemble, just like players in the orchestra. Every single one of them is an incredible soloist, and as soon as they get into the orchestra, and make all that work exactly together, it’s electrifying. That’s what happens when a chorus is made up of fine soloists. I use the word ‘fine’ on purpose, because there are a lot of soloists that don’t work in a chorus because they can’t do that final step to make it work together. There are a lot of good soloists out there who sound good, but I would never let them in my chorus! [Both laugh]

BD:   Fortunately, you have the option of allowing them in or not.

Wolfe: Yes.

BD:   Do you ever look at their temperament?

Wolfe: Yes, but we don’t have temperament in the audition. We don’t know how to audition temperament! [Much laughter] The temperament has to be one of wanting to be part of an ensemble, and again that doesn’t mean that everybody has to have the same personality. That would be boring, but they do have to have the same goal.

BD:   A willingness?

Wolfe: Right, a willingness to go with what it takes to get to that goal.

* * * * *

BD:   You’ve been here for nine or ten years?

Wolfe: [Laughs] Thank you for saying that! This is my seventh year, but what I usually get is, “You’ve been here, what, two years?” I’ve been killing myself for seven!

BD:   Was it daunting for you to follow in the footsteps of Margaret Hillis?

Wolfe: Yes. Margaret was a legend in the field. There is no doubt about it, and she left a chorus that was a joy to work with from the very first moment. As soon as I walked in and started conducting, I said, “This is for me! I like this! This is a really, really good group, so let’s go for it!”

BD:   Did you know her?

Wolfe: I did not know her personally before I came here. I knew her only from professional encounters, such as conferences, and things like that. But we developed a friendship after I came, and she was a real joy to have as a friend.

BD:   Did she give you a few pointers to do this or do that, or be careful of this or be careful of that?

Wolfe: She gave me a sort of technical manual about the operational procedures of a chorus.
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BD:   A chorus or this chorus?

Wolfe: This chorus. These were things that she had put in place, such as the section leader system, and an assistant conductor system. It was very clear, almost a workers’ manual as to how everything functions. I really appreciated that. Unfortunately, shortly after I came here she became ill, and we had virtually no connection musically. She wasn’t even able to come to the concerts.

BD:   Did you try to continue her work, or did you bring your own stamp to it, or both?

Wolfe: I didn’t try to bring my own stamp by coming in and deciding to change everything. You don’t fix what ain’t broke. There were just a few rough things around the edges, because her last three years were the search years, so the chorus had been through many conductors, and a certain amount of precision that the chorus is famous for was not quite in place. There was some fine tuning that needed to be done, but the musicians are so good that it didn’t take long for that to snap back into place. They responded beautifully, and were very, very cooperative. It was kind of amazing.

BD:   That was a good vote of confidence for you.

Wolfe: Yes. It was wonderful to work with people who were really giving themselves so much, and had so much to give. So we got through that transition fairly quickly.

BD:   Did you listen to some of the recordings Margaret had made over the years, just to hear the sound or hear the work?

Wolfe: Yes, I have, and I still listen to them. One of the best libraries of major symphonic chorus material is those recordings. So, I enjoy listening to them.

BD:   Does the Chicago Symphony Chorus get enough work?

Wolfe: What do you mean by that? I would like for them to be all full-time, working here every single day for eight hours a day! [Much laughter] That would be when we’ve had enough!

BD:   I assume that is not even possible...

Wolfe: Well, no. Maybe we’ll do it someday.

BD:   What I mean is, are there enough concerts that involve the chorus each year?

Wolfe: It depends on the season.   A couple of years ago, we had a season that was just jam-packed. It seemed like we were in rehearsals two and three days a week, and we did nine major productions, one of which was Moses und Aron, for which we had an enormous number of rehearsals. Every once in a while, we have a short season. Several years ago we had a season which finished in March! [Both laugh] I don’t know how that happened, but most of the time it’s fairly decently spaced out, and the amount of work makes sense. A few of the singers are volunteers, and some of them are what we call interns, who are on a stipend for the season. Then the others are professionals that work on a per-service basis. So it’s a huge enterprise. But we have expanded their work considerably in the last couple of years. First we created two groups called Resident Ensemble, with six singers each that are doing performances in the schools.

BD: Are they the ones who are doing the singing Valentines?

Wolfe:   No, those are volunteers, and are groups that put themselves together. The Resident Ensemble actually goes out into the schools and to community centers, and does special programs that we invent and work on. Right now we’ve got two different programs in the Chicago public schools. One is connected with their American History curriculum, and other is connected to their World Cultures curriculum. We actually use their text books, and let the music come out of what they are studying in the classroom on a daily basis. This fall, twenty-four members of the chorus also participated this year in two of the Youth Performance Enterprises of the Education Program Department, where the kids are bused into the hall to hear the orchestra. These were sixth to eighth graders, and also high schoolers. Then in January we did the Family VSP [Very Special Promenades] Concerts, which are for the younger children. That is a whole different program, but always with the orchestra and chorus. It’s for kids up to third grade. Then on Saturdays, we’ve done family concerts, so all that’s additional work for the chorus that it’s not been involved in before. Then next year, the real exciting thing is that we’re starting the Chicago Symphony Singers, which will be a vocal ensemble of twenty-fours singers that will perform with members of the orchestra and small instrumental ensembles.

BD:   Will you give everybody an opportunity to do things, so that each person will be in one rather two or three?

Wolfe: There may be some overlap, but we’re trying to spread it out as much as we possibly can. The bottom line is that you have to be sensible about casting, so sometimes the pieces of the puzzle just don’t quite work like it should in the best of all possible worlds.

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BD: Do you do some other conducting as well as choral conducting, not necessarily here but elsewhere?
wolfe

Wolfe: I’ve done opera. I’ve worked with Central City Opera for twenty years, and then did a lot of operetta-conducting and opera-conducting, and which is the logical sibling to symphonic music. It’s the same notion of an orchestra, chorus, and soloists that perform in an extroverted manner, instead of an insular manner. I’ve also worked for many years with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. I founded that chorus, just like Margaret founded this one here in Chicago.

BD:   So, you knew what she had been through.

Wolfe: I certainly did, and to that end I have done a lot of conducting with Colorado Symphony for both choral and orchestral concerts.

BD:   Was this when Entremont was there?

Wolfe: [Philippe] Entremont was there. He was the second music director I worked with. The first one, who asked me to found the chorus, was Gaetano Delogu, an Italian. Entremont was next, and then the Denver Symphony was recreated into the Colorado Symphony, and Marin Alsop is now the music director. Marin and I have been working together for eight or ten years.

BD:   Are you optimistic about the future of choral music?

Wolfe: Very! I am very optimistic! Choral music has greater participation than sports, which is hard to believe. I’m talking about participation, not as spectators, but there are more people involved somehow in singing groups. These are just statistics that somebody else has discovered, not me.

BD:   Why isn’t this on the front page of the Chicago Tribune?

Wolfe: Ugh! [Both laugh, then Wolfe looks at BD wide-eyed] Can you make this happen? I’m ready! [More laughter] That would be good. By the time you count church choirs, and barbershop quartets, and corporate choirs, and caroling, and community choruses, it just goes on and on. The participation in choruses is phenomenal, and it’s not diminishing. What’s good is there seems to be more interest from an audience standpoint, too. I don’t know... it’s hard to tell that. We need statistics on that.

BD:   Are you at the point in your career that you want to be right now?

Wolfe: Yes, I am really happy. Imagine, being fifty-five and just thrilled to death to be making music all the time at this level. Even though I whine about meetings and computers, I spend most of my time involved in music. Imagine how exciting that is, and how fulfilling it is. I really have a good time!

BD:   Do you look a season or two ahead, and offer input as to what you’d like to do?

Wolfe: Yes. I get input, and everyone’s enthusiastic about these works. I’m really surprised at how much my opinions are respected. That doesn’t happen everywhere, so this is a very accommodating institution in that respect.

BD:   Thank you for coming to Chicago, and being part of our family.

Wolfe: Thank you for having me. Boy, talk about a city that’s embraced me. This has been a great place to be. It’s absolutely wonderful!

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This conversation was recorded in Chicago on March 26, 2001. Portions were used in an article published a few weeks later in City Talk magazine dated April 20. This transcription was made in 2024, and posted on this website at that time. My thanks to British soprano Una Barry for her help in preparing this website presentation.

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here. To read my thoughts on editing these interviews for print, as well as a few other interesting observations, click here.

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Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001. His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.

You are invited to visit his website for more information about his work, including selected transcripts of other interviews, plus a full list of his guests. He would also like to call your attention to the photos and information about his grandfather, who was a pioneer in the automotive field more than a century ago. You may also send him E-Mail with comments, questions and suggestions.