‘Messiah’ allows deaf individuals to see the Easter holiday music
The “Messiah” helped the deaf hear for the second Easter in a row.
More than 150 volunteers from many faiths – about 100 singers and 57 in the orchestra – presented the second annual multicultural “Messiah” in the Kent Concert Hall on Saturday.
The production featured a program written in both English and Spanish, ushers able to communicate in both languages and American Sign Language, a chorus in Spanish, music that was translated into ASL and a projection screen that showed the music’s sound in real time using computer graphics.
“Our community is 10 percent Spanish,” said John Ribera, the conductor of the program. “This is our way of reaching out to the community.”
Bryce Myerhoff, who sang a solo during the performance, said the Spanish translation was a good idea.
“I’ve never been involved in something where they translated an English song into Spanish,” he said. “I thought that was really neat.”
Myerhoff’s wife, Cassi, also performed one of the 19 solos during the production.
“It’s really thrilling and exciting when you get a whole orchestra playing for you and not just a piano,” she said.
The Myerhoffs met the last time they performed “Messiah” together, Bryce said.
The “Messiah” group, which had some members from outside of Cache Valley, including the Salt Lake area, performed “Messiah” twice.
During the afternoon family matinee, the group performed 24 songs and Ribera taught the audience about the history of the music and what to listen for during the numbers.
“George F. Handel finished ‘Messiah’ in 23 days,” he said. “He worked on it almost night and day.”
The evening show was a formal event, and the musicians performed 33 songs without Ribera teaching between numbers.
The film “Mr. Holland’s Opus” was the inspiration for the screen, which showed the music in different ways, Ribera said.
In one way, dots in a circle represented various pitches. They would shoot vertically a certain amount when that note was played or sung, depending on how loud that particular note was. At times, it looked like a king’s crown with points of different heights.
Another screen had dots in a line and looked like a constantly changing mountain range when the dots jumped up with their respective pitches.
Yet another screen looked like stars whizzing by in space, with dots clustered in the center that leapt out and changed size as the music was played.
Color showed pitch, with lighter colors representing higher-pitched notes. The speed of the dots showed tempo.
“The music is being projected on the screen using computer graphics,” Ribera said. “We want everyone to experience ‘Messiah’ whether or not they can hear it.”
Carrie Benson, one of the four who signed the words to the music, said about 15 deaf people attended the afternoon matinee of the performance.
Two of her fellow signers were deaf and were able to watch the screen during parts of the performance.
“I was sitting next to [Craig and Jill Radford] during ‘We All Like Sheep,’ and they said, ‘That’s cool. We can tell what the music and the voices are doing,'” Benson said. “They are visual learners.”
Benson said it was a challenge for the Radfords to sign the words to music they couldn’t hear. One of the other signers would sit in the audience and occasionally sign the words the choir was singing so the deaf translators could stay with the music.
The group, which is composed of many USU students and some high school students, has been practicing every Sunday since January on the production. About half participated last year, which was the first performance of the multicultural “Messiah,” Ribera said.
It is the only one of its kind in the world. The production has not been translated into Spanish, so the group did its own translation and sang one of the choruses in Spanish, he said.
“I’m not aware of anywhere else in the world this is done,” Ribera said. “It’s just something fun to do. It’s not just the notes; it’s the message. The music is uplifting.”
The performance is done through donations, and Ribera said he hopes it continues to be an annual event.
“If we can find the funding to do it, we’d like to continue,” he said. “It’s getting support, and it’s building momentum.”
-kcartwright@cc.usu.edu