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Sharon Paul, who's directed the Eugene Symphony Chorus for a quarter-century, is bowing out of that role — but not before tackling a massive Brahms requiem.
The way Sharon Paul sees it, a series of small accidents helped launch her on a successful career as a choral director.
There was the time when she was a student at Claremont High School in California, for example, when she accompanied her best friend to a choir rehearsal. The choir director had scheduled a piece that required someone to play the recorder; as it happened, Paul played the recorder.
As it also happened, that was the day the choir director cut the recorder piece from the program — “perhaps because of my playing,” Paul joked. The director still invited Paul to join the choir.
“I said ‘no,’ my best friend elbowed me and I said, ‘yes’ — and really loved it.”
Then there was the time at Pomona College, where she sang in the choir. One day, the conductor was late in arriving at a photo shoot for the ensemble, “and they needed someone just to conduct for the publicity photos, and I quite literally got pushed in front of the group.”
The conductor arrived late, “watched me work, and thought that that was something I would be good at.”
The conductor’s instincts were better than his timeliness.
Today, Paul — who had been a piano major at Pomona — serves on the faculty of the University of Oregon School of Music and Dance, where she is the department head of music performance and the director of choral activities.
For 25 years, she also has been the director of the Eugene Symphony Chorus — but Thursday’s performance of the Eugene Symphony and Chorus will be her last in that role.
Her decision to step down from the symphony chorus wasn’t an easy one.
“I love working with the symphony chorus,” Paul, 67, said. “I love these people. I love their passion. It has been a great joy to work with them.”
But she had a day last week — a day that included university duties and a rehearsal with the chorus — that started with an 8:30 a.m. meeting and then stretched to the end of the chorus rehearsal, at about 9:30 p.m. The 13-hour day was not particularly unusual, Paul said, and “it just feels like I want to thin out my schedule a little bit.”
She’s going out with a bang.
Thursday, the ensemble will perform Brahms’ “A German Requiem,” a large-scale work for chorus and orchestra.
Francesco Lecce-Chong, the symphony’s music director, programmed the work before he knew it would mark Paul’s finale as chorus director, “but it fits the occasion as one of the most beloved choral works in the repertoire and one of the biggest tasks for any chorus to prepare,” he wrote in an email to Lookout Eugene-Springfield.
The concert also ushers in a season of farewells for the symphony: Its May concert marks the last performance by Lecce-Chong, who is leaving Eugene for the music director position at the Santa Rosa Symphony.
“Since I knew that this would be one of my final concerts in Eugene, I wanted to finish with one of my favorite choral works and a work that has personally been very important to me throughout my career,” Lecce-Chong wrote.
The April 24 concert also features Aaron Copland’s “The Tender Land” suite.
‘Devilishly hard, but beautiful’
But it’s the seven-movement, hour-plus Brahms “German Requiem” that dominates the concert.
“It’s an extremely challenging piece,” Paul said. “It’s devilishly hard, but it’s so beautiful.”
Adding to the challenge is that a conductor only has so much time to work with the singers.
“You don’t have endless rehearsal, so you have to really pace it so they peak at the right time,” she said.
But it’s not the first large-scale work the chorus has tackled under Paul’s direction. It has performed the entirety of Handel’s “Messiah,” which requires more than two hours. The chorus also has performed Verdi’s “Requiem” and Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, both mammoth works. It has also performed more modern works, such as John Adams’ “On the Transmigration of Souls,” and lighter fare.
After stints teaching at Chico State University and as artistic director of the San Francisco Girls Chorus, Paul was hired at the University of Oregon, where she was quickly offered the position leading the symphony chorus.
“As chorus director these many years, Sharon Paul has shaped the artistic growth not only of the chorus, but will leave a lasting impact on the entire symphony,” Lecce-Chong wrote.
“The chorus is also an important link with the community as it brings in members of the community to perform with the orchestra,” he said.
That’s one of the things Paul loves about the chorus, which requires what she called “a very light audition” for membership.
“We agreed early on that we want it to be a cross-section of the community, and so you will have an attorney sitting next to a bus driver sitting next to a student sitting next to a retired person,” she said. “So it’s really a beautiful cross-section of the community, and also with various experience levels in terms of music. So it’s very much a community choir.”
It’s one that will be hard for Paul to leave.
“I’ve been waffling for a long time,” she said about her decision to step down. “But 25 years feels like a nice round number.”
And, as it turns out, the Brahms “German Requiem” was one of the first pieces she did with the Eugene Symphony, more than two decades ago.
“So it feels like it’s kind of a nice full-circle moment to leave.”
If you go
The Eugene Symphony and Chorus performs at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 24 at the Hult Center for the Performing Arts, 1 Eugene Center in downtown. Tickets range from $15 to $74, with $10 tickets available for students and youth.
