ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, December 16, 1996 TAG: 9612180005
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
So they weren't quite the conquering heroes.
To the people of St.Lo, France - liberated by U.S. troops, many of them from these Virginia hills, in July 1944 - the Roanoke College Choir was close enough.
Midway through a whirlwind European singing tour last spring, the road-weary college students arrived at the edge of the Normandy city - to be met by St.Lo police. Lights flashing, stopping traffic as they went, the gendarmes escorted the tour bus straight to the site of that night's performance.
The young singers were overwhelmed.
They were even more impressed by the crowd that turned up to hear them at the little church of Saint-Croix - or Holy Cross. Not to mention the applause.
"That was their best concert," said Jeffrey Sandborg, choir director and driving force behind the group's tour of Europe in May. "There was an emotional dimension to it that they sang their hearts out for."
"It was definitely different," recalled choir member Dan Gardner, a Christiansburg resident.
"We sang not just to do a job. We did it for them."
It wasn't as if the rest of the trip had been boring.
This was, after all, the Roanoke College Choir's first European tour ever.
And if that alone wasn't enough for the 47 college students, many of whom had never been abroad before, they were making their first-ever album, too.
"Currents" - recorded last winter and spring in England, France and Roanoke - is available on CD and cassette (and not coincidentally, just in time for Christmas). It includes a mix of religious and folk songs dating from our time back through the 18th century and Johann Sebastian Bach - whose "Lobet den Herrn" the choir recorded at an 800-year-old English church - to Hans Leo Hassler, a German composer born in 1564. Students said their arrangements of American folk standards such as "Shenandoah" went over with the European audiences best.
The choir plans a second CD, this time of Christmas music, for next year.
Sandborg, choir director since 1985, had wanted to take his choir abroad to perform for years. No more excuses in '96, he decided - "because we have a really good choir."
Recording was not part of his original plan, however. Sandborg believed that traveling - and performing for free in some of Europe's greatest churches and cathedrals - would be experience enough for his students, who ponied up $2,000 apiece for the trip.
During its 14-day stay, the choir performed at Chartres Cathedral and Notre Dame in Paris, as well as churches in England, The Netherlands and Belgium.
"Any time you travel, it broadens your perspective in all the traditional ways, both obvious and subtle," Sandborg said. "I don't know how it can not have an impact" on their musical skills.
Meanwhile, the choir had begun work on its CD, recording it in a place that may be as close as Roanoke will ever get to medieval Europe - St. Andrew's Catholic Church.
As the choir's departure date approached, the recording slipped behind schedule - and Sandborg decided to just take the sound engineer along.
"It became apparent we weren't going to get it all done," Sandborg said. "We recorded over there and came back and used the best recordings we could."
Recording engineer Harold Thompson, of Thompson's Audio Services in Roanoke, said the great churches and cathedrals made perfect settings for choral music, because voices blend easily in the cavernous rooms. "For choir music, the spaces are just marvelous."
Still, Thompson said, they pose problems for recording - largely because they are so popular with tourists. The choir's best sound, he said, probably came from inside two of the world's most famous buildings - the two Notre Dames of Paris and Chartres. In the end, both were unusable because of outside noise.
"We ended up using a lot of stuff from the church in St.Lo. That was not a great-sounding room, but we had a great performance there," Thompson said.
They also used several songs recorded at the small (though blessedly quiet) old Lutheran church of St. Anne and St. Agnes in London. In the end, though, Thompson said with a chuckle, the recordings from St. Andrew's were probably as good as anything else they put on the tape. Five of the 15 songs on the CD were recorded in Roanoke, and 10 abroad.
The music is heartfelt throughout and often lovely, with a resonance Thompson said comes from the vast buildings in which they sang, and not from recording gimmicks.
The students are awed by themselves.
``It's amazing to me to be a part of a choir that makes a CD,'' said choir member Heather Davis, a 1993 graduate of William Byrd High School. ``You just listen, and say, `Is that us?'''
``I think it's a good mix, and it's really neat that it was done in those different places around the world,'' said Christiansburg's Gardner. ``And it was done with my friends. We had a blast.''
Indeed, choir members sang with a Dutch choir in the Netherlands, saw the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. They walked the medieval streets of Bruges, Belgium. A number of them were from Southwest Virginia - and they were not too suave and experienced to be wide-eyed tourists when the occasion demanded it.
``I remember my friend and I were standing in front of the Eiffel Tower,'' Davis said. ``I said, `Can you believe we're standing here in front of the Eiffel Tower?' It was night and it was all lit up and it was beautiful. I had always wanted to go abroad. I felt very lucky to be there.''
Most returned with powerful memories of St.Lo - a candidate for Roanoke's sister city - and of nearby Omaha Beach, where soldiers fell by the hundreds on D-Day, many of them younger than the students are themselves.
``It was just like history in their faces,'' Sandborg said. ``There's nothing like being there. And I think they got it.''
``All those thousands and thousands of tombstones,'' said Marianne Francis, a junior from Elliston. ``I guess going into it I thought, `It can't have a whole lot of effect on me.' It was amazingly moving. Then getting to St.Lo and seeing how much it meant to them, what Americans had done for them. I wasn't up on my history. They were showing us buildings where there were bullet holes.''
``There's just so many of them,'' Davis said of the American graves. ``It was very moving to look at 17-and 18-year-olds, men - and there were several women, the head of the Red Cross, her grave was there. It was horrible. And yet what they did was so courageous. You have to think whether you would make that sacrifice.''
``I wasn't sure what emotion I was feeling,'' Francis said.
Grief? Gratitude? Sadness? Has she figured it out yet?
``I feel grateful. I feel they are heroes,'' Francis said, thinking the words out slowly. ``They did their best, and they died for their convictions. But they didn't die without having done anything with their lives.''
Ask anyone in St.Lo.
LENGTH: Long : 128 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ELIZ. KOESTERS HEIL. 1. Among the Roanoke Collegeby CNBChoir's performances in Europe was a one at the Notre Dame cathedral
in Paris. Music from the tour is included on the choir's CD. 2. A
highlight of the trip was the choir's performance in St. Lo, France.
3. Cover of "Currents." color. KEYWORDS: INFOLINE