Deborah Simpkin King

I'm well. How are you, sir? It's a delight to be here.

Well, um, as you know we—as you just said, we performed under a lengthy Latin name for a number of years. And it's not an inappropriate name because it literally means "School of Singers", and then "on Hudson" meaning the Hudson River. And here we are, on either side of the Hudson, located in both Jersey and New York. And School of Singers we are. Um, but we found that uh people stumbled over the name and it suggested uh a sacred kind of uh underpinning, and that's not at all who we are. So, uh we thought about it and thought about it, and uh after two or three years of playing with different names that would feel like we could sing under that name, uh the name Ember came up. And I think it—it stuck and resonated because it has so many different meanings and different connotations. Um, certainly it indicates warmth, uh brightness... um, there's an element of danger uh that goes with it. Um, uh the fact that you can blow on it and it right— brightens up, lightens up. Uh that's the use of breath, the shared breath. So, so many things about the word ember just seemed like, "Yeah, that's who we are". That's where it came from.

It does.

[sighs] I started out really as um as a singer. Uh, I—I—I needed to sing, I needed to express, and uh began studying voice, and uh little by little began—I had a marvelous uh, all the way back to middle school, marvelous middle school teacher who uh had a—a girl's choir. And after middle school, there were five of us who just kind of stuck together, and we made our own arrangements—I was living in Texas at the time—uh made our own arrangements, kind of traveled around Texas singing at various kinds of events. She continued to work with us, and I was smitten with uh the ensemble art. I didn't know those words at that time, I didn't know to call it that. All I knew is it was just a great time. And uh it seemed like it was something important that was happening within us. And then when it came time to—to look for a school, to go to undergraduate school, um I went to a workshop that was uh offered by my church at the time uh to the adult church choir. I was singing in that as a high school student, and um the—the clinician was Beverly Henson, who at that time was the director of choral activities at Texas Christian University. And I was quite taken with what he did, with the energy that he brought, and the specifics of um how he would dive into a score and let uh let the voice of the composer... uh I mean, hopefully, you know, Bach isn't really very available for us these days to—to talk to directly, but there's a lot that we can learn from his scores, and how he would interpret that. And of course, uh Bev studied with Julius Herford, and, you know, enough said in terms of the musicological uh background there. And that hope, the depth of all of that. I didn't know at the time that I would be doing a PhD in musicology, goodness, that was, you know, a decade, you know, in the—in the future at that time. But the whole thing seemed to kind of come together, the use of the voice, in which uh my first mentor took me in—in that direction, uh in a very holistic way, Karo Carapetyan. And I uh owe him um, you know, anything that I do vocally is his product. Um, uh wonderful instructor and not just of voice, but also a—a powerful choral presence as well, and also a musicologist. Uh so, I had—

Ara Carapetyan still lives in Houston, yeah. That's one of his two sons, yeah.

Yeah. So, um—

Uh, you know, I—I had some—some giants uh on whose shoulders I chose to uh initially not stand, but—but ride, and learn, and grow, and become increasingly um convinced that this was where I needed to be. And I did go through a period in my early twenties, uh late teens, early twenties, uh when I thought, "You know, what am I doing waving my arms around when people can't put food on their table and uh can't balance their checkbook and, you know, I should—maybe there's something more meaningful that I can do". And I really went through some pretty difficult soul-searching around it and came to recognize that, you know, we each have our vehicle through which to make an impact in the world, and um mine was not so much the spoken word, but mine is definitely the musical word. And um and that's what I'm here to do.

Okay.

Well, we have a roster of about 50 singers. Uh, and we tend to perform, in a non-COVID year, one side or the other of 30 singers. Um, in September when we performed, we performed with 17, and uh a week from today, uh the 18th of December, we will perform with 14 singers.

[laughter] Yeah. Well, we have um—I have really followed the science of uh, you know, as we're learning more and more about this disease and how it is communicated. Of course, we're talking about COVID, this is for reference of the people who are watching this 27 years later and don't know. Um, [laughter] right. Um, it's— you know, and of course, singing has—has been deemed a super-spreader event. And uh this is disheartening news to those of us who are singers. And there was, you know, a major um study that was done and—and all kinds of dire predictions that came out in June of 2020, and I was on that initial uh seminar um when it was presented live, and of course then it had a life after that and circulated electronically and so forth. And then there was a follow-up study that did some real specifics. Uh not just, "Gosh, when we sing, aerosol spews out and that's a—a horrible thing," but, okay, when a singer is singing in this manner sings, unmasked it goes this far, the droplets hang this lo— I mean, you know, all kinds of specifics. And um and so we— we learned a great deal by the time we got to mid-August, and there was what they called a Round 2 study uh that they presented the documentation of. They presented it at that time uh because um a lot of people were going back to school. I mean, we're in New York, right, where basically life shut down for months. Um, but around the country, that was not the case, and certainly not in August. And—and yet there was real concern, you know, we're going back into classrooms, be they uh orchestra halls, uh, you know, with wind instruments playing, be they uh rehearsal halls for choirs, what are we doing, and how can we protect the students and the teachers? Um, so they said, you know, "What data we have at this point, let's make it available," knowing that the studies are ongoing, it's yet inconclusive. But there were some things that they knew, and um and so, following that science, knowing what we know now about what kind of fabrics, what kind of weaves of those kinds of fabrics um provide filtration at what levels, um we designed uh a mask. A singer's mask, uh and there are a number of singer's masks on the market at this point. Uh, but I have not seen one that meets the specifications or exceeds the specifications that were laid out in that Round 2 study. There has now been an update, a Round 3 of that, that came out uh I guess about 3 weeks ago, and um basically the data has not changed that much, uh but I need to study it more thoroughly to be able to really say much about that. But we developed a mask, it has five layers, one of which—the middle of which—is a removable uh MERV 13 fabric, which is like a HEPA filter. And it—it slides into the— the mask itself is washable, has four layers uh, and it has that pocket in the middle in—in which the MERV 13 filter is—is inserted and can be removed and and UV cleaned in between uses. And um so we sang—that was a big part of our protocol, and then we developed other protocols as well.

Correct.

You know, it's—it's kind of a— we have a little video uh from the event. Um, you could, you know, listen to it, it's about 4 minutes long um, and of course—

Ember. Yeah. Oh, the website itself is emberensemble.org.

Yeah. Uh—

Well, you know, there are so many wonderful um electronic creativity projects going on, and you see little tiles with singers in them and all kinds of fabulous things going on. I have great deference for that. I think that is part of the answer to how we get through this time, and I have put my energies on finding ways of keeping live singing going when it can be safe. And yet, making sure it's safe, you know, nobody wants to take undue risks.

Okay.

There are two things unique about our programming. Uh, one is we work almost exclusively with living composers. Not completely exclusively, but almost exclusively. Um, so that's one thing. The other is we will take on a theme uh and pursue it through a year, uh not just theme a particular concert, but an entire year around—whether it's a concept or an event um, uh or something we— we feel needs to be looked at pretty seriously in our society. One example is last year, we chose the concept of listening, because we felt that we were not doing that well in our world. And, the first concert in that series, for example, was called Civil Discourse, because we felt we were lacking in that. That was this time last year.

We, you know, we could probably stick with that. [laughter] We could probably stick with that.

Uh, and we did a—a year uh on uh the World War I Armistice Centennial Anniversary, and so forth. Um, so those are two things that are kind of unique about how we program. And we interact with our composers very directly. Um, our— our home rehearsal environment, where we're not now, um because that's— it's too small for us to be able to be in that context and socially distanced. We have to be in larger spaces where we can spread out more. But in Opera America, where we normally rehearse, um we have uh a big screen um, uh TV with access, uh and we we— we bring our composers in from all around the world and interact with them directly, and the singers really thrive on that, really enjoy that. I do, too. I love it.

Well, this one is going to be in a small church uh, but no audience.

Uh, so—

—it's entirely a live stream, and this is a first for us. So, you know, ask me later how it turned out. [laughter] But— but we're, you know, we spread out—I was in there with my 7-foot long rope, you know, between, you know, a Post-it Note on the floor for that singer and, you know, 7 feet away, and— and spreading out around the room, fully using the space. And there is a—a technology that has been installed in the room uh by an organization called Muse, m-u-s-a-e.m-e. Uh, and they do a—a 360 VR experience, and they even will provide um free glasses to uh allow people into a fully immersive experience. Wow. So, we'll see how that turns out, but we're doing that a week from today.

Yeah, yeah.

Just some kind of mental, I don't know. [laughter]

Well, Project Encore came out of uh, as with everything I do, it came out of a— a need uh that we identified, and um it actually came out of uh the same organization that Ember lives within, Schola Cantorum on Hudson. We were approaching our 15th anniversary—the organization is now 26 years old, so this was back a decade, a little bit more than a decade—and um we were thinking, "Well, you know, 15's kind of significant, you know, we need to make a little bit of a to-do over ourselves. What can we do that— that really speaks to um kind of honoring, celebrating who we are and what we do?" And by that time, we had become increasingly known for working with living composers. We didn't kind of hang that out as part of our identification yet, but we did it a lot, uh enjoyed that a great deal. And so we thought, "Well, you know, let's uh let's see what we can find in terms of programming um, uh little-known works through the year", you know, throughout the year. And of course my board looked at me like I had three heads, which they were right to do. They said, "Who is going to come to concerts of unknown music, unknown composers?" So, okay, we agreed on a thread throughout the season that included that, and specifically of works that had received a premiere but that had not gotten a serious traction in the choral world. And the thing that— the reason that that was a bit of a bee in my bonnet was that uh we had premiered a wonderful Latin mass setting, very dense harmony, not easy to do, uh fully a cappella, uh many parts, it had gone very well, and the composer asked could I use our uh the— the recording of this from the concert and shop it around the world, see if I can get other performance. Well, admittedly, that was a bit of an esoteric work, but it's a wonderful work. Three years later, he finally got a nibble. And, um that's a long time for a really wonderful composition to sit on the shelf, and he was being very proactive. He was writing to Kapellmeister all around the world, he was sending— uh yeah, you know, you're a composer.

Yeah. [laughter] It's the second performance syndrome. And composers all know about it, but, you know, duh, compose— uh conductors, you know, we're just kind of going along, performing wonderful pieces.

[sighs] It has to move me as a human being. And um there's no doubt that that's a very subjective response, because we're all moved by different things. Um, I think probably early in my career, it would have been a very accurate accusation, uh [laughter] if I should use those words, to say that I was a very cerebral, you know, person, very cerebral professional. And uh, you know, Schenkerian—where I think I even have a Schenkerian book up here behind me uh on analysis—and I— I could get into all of that and just, you know, understanding and pulling apart a score and— and could get very involved and engaged and enthusiastic about the technique of a score and how— how well-constructed it was and— and on and on.

Um, and I still can. But that will not necessarily lead me to perform a score. I have to be moved by it. Now, if it's a composer I know, and I have a piece that comes to me and is just kind of like, "Yeah, that's going to be awkward, I just don't quite know what to say," um I will give it a few more listens, and often it does make its way into me and I have to work a little harder at it, at finding what it is that can move people. Assuming I find it, even I have— if I have to work at it uh quite a bit, then I can sell it to my singers, and through them, that score can take life with an audience.

If— if yeah, if— if I can't find that, if I can't connect with the message of a score—

—I have no business performing it.

That's right.

Well, [laughter] that— yes, I mean, there, you know, uh Ember, as you— as you referenced, we do many different things. Uh sometimes we do very esoteric things, sometimes we do— well, our September concert, for example, this was the first time people were hearing choral music since the pandemic began. It's the first time we were singing together. We needed feel-good. And it was pretty close to a pops concert. It wasn't exactly, but it was very lightweight. And I love doing that sort of thing, there's an immediacy to it and— and, you know, it's— it's right there, people are just charged by it.

That's right.

Oh, it's fun to dabble.

Oh, thanks.

Yeah.

Oh, sure. Um, yeah, absolutely. Well, uh for one thing, um the— the church that I serve right now, we will never again do services that uh are not made available electronically.

And so people who, you know, their greatest con— uh contact with the church they used to go to all the time, maybe they're elderly, was getting maybe some flowers, you know, once every 5 or 6 weeks or something, you know, the church would do. Now they can go to church, "go to church" every week with the rest of their congregation and see people that they know, and uh and see their sanctuary and so forth. We will never again not do that, and I can tell you that for sure because quite a bit of money has been put into equipment to make sure we never again don't do that.

Um, but even—

Well, we've done a variety of things um from the beginning of the pandemic uh. Initially, we completely shut down the church, nobody even went in the— the building at all, um and we did uh the church service from three locations uh— well, four locations— uh each of the two pastors, my living room, and uh the studio of the— the person who was running the— the Zoom technology.

And putting it all together. And, you know, we got increasingly fluent with it and that we did that for quite a while. And um then as of uh late August, uh early September, I guess, we started— uh we had an outdoor worship service where people were together for the first time, that was quite a moment.

And it was live-streamed, yes, it was, but it was totally outside, of course. And then um in middle October, we began to have indoor worship, limited numbers, you know, as dictated by the state. And, but the protocols were so daunting that I was frankly surprised that anybody would want to come, but we had as many as we could take. People had to sign up in advance and so forth, but we, you know, the worship leaders, the— the, again, the two pastors, myself, and the technicians uh in the back, we did the service to a very sparsely populated sanctuary. We are now back to empty sanctuary live streaming. So, you know, at this point, we've kind of been through the gamut and we're fluent and flexible with a variety of mechanisms.

Well, and my choir has— we haven't missed a Thursday night, that's their rehearsal night. We meet on Zoom, they do things that I'm— they tell me they just sound wonderful, and of course I can't hear a thing. But then we rehearse music, they send it in to the man who mixes it, who happens to be my professional tenor, uh and we come out with an anthem. So, we produce an anthem out of that choir every Sunday. This particular Sunday, we're doing the Gibbons'—

That's my church choir. We're doing the Gibbons' uh This is the Record of John, which is—

—you know, so we're keeping it happening. [laughter]

Yeah.

You're talking about the New York Choral Consortium.

Yes, that's my honor to be, yes.

Well, it's— it's a— it's a great joy to be with you, Michael. I look forward to when we can sit across a table from each other again.

That will be amazing.