O.C. Singers Savor Lincoln Center Stint

Karen Anacker and Sherry Paine are ecstatic.

As two of five Orange County choral singers in New York this week on a special project, they are realizing the almost-impossible dream of singing in Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, accompanied by members of the New York Philharmonic.

This is it. This is the big time, especially for people who are not full-time professional singers.

“Lincoln Center, the New York Philharmonic--it doesn’t get much better than this,” mezzo-sopranos Anacker and Paine said in overlapping voices.

The Orange County singers are joining conductor Helmuth Rilling and the Stuttgart Bach Choir (Gachinger Kantorei) for tonight’s U.S. premiere of the recently reconstructed “Messa per Rossini.”

Joining Anacker and Paine from Orange County are mezzo-soprano Linda Hammontree, tenor Alvin Brightbill and baritone Gordon Paine.

The Mass, a project instigated in 1868 by Verdi to honor Rossini, who had died that year, involved 12 other composers, each of whom wrote a different movement. But for various complicated reasons, the premiere of the work had to wait until last year under Rilling in Germany and Italy. (Verdi rewrote his section--the Libera Me--for his later Manzoni Requiem.)

The first of four American performances during the coming week is tonight. Saturday’s concert will be broadcast at 10 p.m. on KOCE Channel 50, in Orange County, and at 8 p.m. on KPBS Channel 15 in San Diego. KCET Channel 28 in Los Angeles will not carry the broadcast. (KCET officials cite conflicts with previously scheduled “cultural awareness” programs.)

The seeming oddity of five Orange County residents being among only 14 Americans in the New York performances is explained by the fact that for a number of years, the five have sung under Rilling at his Oregon Bach Festival. The conductor said he didn’t need to bring from Stuttgart all 80 singers he needed for the “Messa” because of the “excellent chorus” he had built up in Oregon.

“I know these people very well,” Rilling said between rehearsals. “They are very good, and they know my style of conducting.”

Except for Anacker, all members of the Orange County contingent were making their first trip to New York.

In two days of sightseeing, they got separated by the Friends of Boliva participants in the Columbus Day parade in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral; visited Rockefeller Center; craned their necks at the Trump Tower; toured the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and saw “forever” from the top of the World Trade Center.

Then it was all work.

But at least they had a chance to adjust for jet lag. Half the Stuttgart forces arrived at the airport only an hour before rushing to make the first rehearsal.

Rilling led the sessions in a fluid mix of German and English, and a number of the American singers had to ask their Stuttgart cohorts for instant translations.

“I particularly wanted to know when he was making a joke,” said Sherry Paine.

Giving first performances of a newly reconstructed work has its hazards, however.

Anacker said she “didn’t even see the music until Monday. We were sight-reading” at the first rehearsal. (Sherry and Gordon Paine, who are married, had sung the first performances under Rilling in Stuttgart and Italy last year.)

Also seeing the music for the first time were the members of the New York Philharmonic, who, despite having to stop to make corrections in their scores, managed to wow the singers anyway.

“My god, when they’re on, they’re on,” Brightbill said.

The singers were equally enthusiastic about the acoustics of the hall. Anacker talked about its “focus,” Gordon Paine about its “presence.”

Brightbill said, “It’s a much better hall” than the Orange County Performing Arts Center. “I like it better than the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, too.”

The singers were captivated by the “Messa,” although the shifts in style among the 13 composers were dramatic. “You just don’t change style; you go into another dimension,” Gordon Paine said.

Rilling explained that there was nearly a half-century difference between the birth dates of the youngest (Pietro Platania) and the oldest (Carlo Coccia) composers who contributed to the piece.

“And this was at a time when even 10 years made a (stylistic) difference,” Rilling said.

To complicate matters, after the original performance had fallen through, the parts were returned to the individual composers. And in order to reconstruct the work, scholars and editors had to sift through manuscripts of varying quality, ranging from finished scores to mere sketches.

Rilling said he even had to compose his own timpani part for one movement because the editor’s notes “were totally unusable.”

That kind of creativity doesn’t surprise the five singers, who say they “would go to Timbuktu” to sing for him.

Working with Rilling is “the only chance a singer gets to be treated as a musician,” Gordon Paine saud. “You use every skill you’ve got, and those skills get sharpened. You become a better musician or teacher.”

Anacker said that she is “transformed” when he conducts.

Brightbill added, “He sets a standard that you never knew existed.”

So it is not surprising that although their meals, transportation and lodging are paid for, the singers aren’t in it for the money.

“It is costing some of us to do this,” said Gordon Paine, who is taking two weeks off from Cal State Fullerton, with the support of the administration.

Brightbill, who teaches choral music at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, was also able to get support from his college, taking “staff development leave” for the two weeks.

Sherry Paine, a speech-language therapist, had started a job at Lanterman Developmental Center in Pomona at the beginning of August, when she went to her boss to ask for two weeks’ leave.

“I can top that,” said Anacker, a member of the Irvine Camerata said. “I was called to come here on the day I was going into a new job” as a music librarian at Santa Ana Public Library.

“On my first day of work, I said, ‘Hi, can I have the next 10 days off?’ ”

She got it.

However, one teaching colleague from Riverside, whose name they did not make public, was not so lucky when he received Rilling’s invitation.

His boss told him that he would be docked in pay and would also lose a year of retirement credit if he accepted, the singers said.

He decided not to go.

“We are very grateful for the support we got,” Paine said.

Already, they foresee a letdown and wistfulness when they return home after basking in the New York limelight.

“We don’t think we will be back here ever again, doing anything like this,” Sherry Paine said. “I won’t even sing again until the Bach Oregon Festival next summer.”

“I don’t foresee standing on the stage of Avery Fisher Hall ever again,” Brightbill said.

“It’s going to be traumatic to me,” Hammontree said. “We just have to be thankful they asked us when they could have asked other people.”

“Potentially it’s very depressing,” Gordon Paine said. “But this is something that maybe can make us better at what we do, and maybe we can somehow pass some of that on to other people. If we can just keep that goal in mind, it will help dull the pain.”

The television broadcast of Verdi’s “Messa per Rossini” will air at 10 p.m. Saturday on KOCE Channel 50.