Quarter Time at The Church of St. Mary the Virgin with Young New Yorkers’ Chorus

Performances

May 30

Written By Daniel

The Church of St. Mary the Virgin on 46th Street gives a choir photographer a specific problem: the nave runs long, the altar end is genuinely far away, and the ornate reredos behind the risers means the background is always in the frame alongside the ensemble.

Wide view of The Church of St. Mary the Virgin interior from a rear balcony, full choir lit at the altar end, pews filled with audience on both sides of the nave, Gothic arches receding toward the chancel

YNYC (Young New Yorkers' Chorus) presented Quarter Time at St. Mary the Virgin. Five of the pieces on the program were world premieres.

The full-ensemble numbers filled the chancel steps and the choir stalls, and from the back of the nave there's no avoiding the architecture: hanging censers, ironwork screens, the reredos lit behind the ensemble.

Full choir in black filling the chancel of St. Mary the Virgin, conductor facing away from camera at a podium with camera rig, grand piano to the right, ornate altar and reredos lit behind the ensemble, audience in foreground pews

One of the premieres was Matthew Marcus's A Question, and it's the piece that gave me the clearest soloist frame of the night: a violinist out front, bow catching the chancel light, singers behind him soft in the background.

That violinist frame points at the thing I'm always working toward in a room like this. A foreground subject pulls the eye, and the depth of the nave that fights me on the wide shots starts working for me instead, layering the singers back into a soft, dark field. The architecture stops being a problem and turns into the set.

Female conductor in black, mouth wide open mid-phrase, both hands raised and curved near her chest, gold candlestick out of focus in the background, dark church interior framing her

Most of my night was spent reading where the next frame would come from. The ensemble configurations kept changing, and a soloist could step out at any point, so I was tracking the program and watching the risers at the same time, moving when I needed a cleaner line on whoever was carrying the phrase.

Conductor seen from behind at left, right hand extended mid-gesture toward choir, group of mixed singers in black at center and right, bearded male singer prominent at center foreground, ornate gilded choir screen behind

When a piece is brand new, the photos are the only record of how it sounded in the room the first time. Five premieres means five performances that exist nowhere else, and the gallery is what YNYC has to point a grant officer or a board member back to when the night is over.