Sorrow, hope and joy, the emotions of this year, were expressed Monday evening at the winter performance of the San Francisco Girls Chorus. Celebrating its 45th anniversary, the event was also a reminder of the organization’s original mission to create a respectable space for young women to be vocal in public life.
Artistic director Valerie Sainte-Agathe has managed to square the relation between a city composed of world cultures and a European art form that dates to the Middle Ages. A program of community-sung folk songs from Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East shared space with Christmas carols that migrated west with the pioneers.
Over 2,000 people in holiday wear filed into the decorated Davies Symphony Hall in the center of San Francisco. Many cradled bouquets of blossoms, soon to be delivered to daughters at the rear stage door.
The first act was stolen by the youngest ensembles.
Sung by the shiny voices of 7-year-old girls, the mournful lyrics of Pete Seeger were almost heartbreaking, “Where have all the soldiers gone? They’ve gone to graveyards every one.”
The mood became buoyant with the vision of 4-year old girls marching across stage in formal gowns. With surprising discipline, they performed a Chinese folk song, “Mo Li Hua,” in Chinese and in English. The second act opened with the South African songs “Shosholoza” and “Siyahamba,” accompanied by the girl’s own stomping heels.
“All of them, coming through this program over 10 to 15 years of their life, really leave with a sense of discipline,” said the chorus’ executive director Adriana Marcial. “To really have a sense of their own voice, not just their singing voice, but to know what their voice feels like in front of people and on the stage and to have some independent power, I just think that those are the things that stick with you over the course of your life.”
The chorus’ originator, Elizabeth Appling, was a native of San Mateo. She attended Annie Wright, a residential all-girls school in Tacoma, Washington, where every student participated in music and sports. She studied choral conducting with Howard Swan at Occidental College and received her master’s degree in musicology from Stanford University, eventually becoming an episcopal priest.
At that time, symphonies worked with boys’ choirs. Some toured the world, representing their city at international events, like the famous Vienna Boys Choir.
“To really have a sense of their own voice, not just their singing voice, but to know what their voice feels like in front of people and on the stage and to have some independent power, I just think that those are the things that stick with you over the course of your life.” Adriana Marcial, San Francisco Girls Chorus executive director
Appling worked with the San Francisco Opera to start a girls’ chorus in 1978. The first rehearsals took place all over the city in several churches, even a funeral home.
Today, the choir has 378 students with 50 faculty members, choral directors and accompanists. It offers six levels of music education in ascending age groups through high school. Each level constitutes a separate chorus.
In 2005, an endowment provided a permanent home in the Hayes Valley neighborhood, the Kanbar Performing Arts Center. They also have programs in Bayview-Hunters Point and Emeryville in the East Bay. Tuition starts at $1,500 per year, and more than 30 percent of students receive scholarships.
In addition to its engagements with the San Francisco Opera and Symphony, it has performed with the Kronos Quartet, at Carnegie Hall with the Philip Glass Ensemble, at Lincoln Center with The Knights orchestra and at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
None of these lofty ambitions were clouding the performance Monday night, when the audience joined the chorus. Midway through the song “I Left My Heart In San Francisco,” conductor Sainte-Agathe pivoted to face the crowd, extending her arms to embrace the community.
A warm drone spiked with waking voices sang out the city’s theme, “The morning fog may chill the air, I don’t care. My love waits there in San Francisco, above the blue and windy sea.”