'We've worked our way through several Vespers,' Jeffrey Skidmore of feted choir Ex Cathedra tells Arminta Wallace.
The third weekend in August. Kilkenny Arts Festival. If you're a classical music fan, get a big red marker and get it into your diary right now. Not that the rest of the fest is to be sniffed at. Kilkenny has always had a solid central core of music programming, and this year's opening weekend - from August 12th - features a Proms-style gig by the Irish Youth Wind Ensemble, with Finghin Collins doing Rhapsody in Blue and James Dunne on marimba, followed by the Finnish pianist Antti Siirala playing Beethoven and Brahms, the young Madrid-based Cuarteto Casals playing Mozart and Shostakovich, and a recital by the glamorous English soprano Carolyn Sampson.
But this year there's a new development at Kilkenny in the shape of a guest programmer - the conductor and early music expert Jeffrey Skidmore.
The festival's classical strand will build to a finale constructed around the skills of Skidmore's choral group, Ex Cathedra, and a group of associated musicians.
"It's a way for people to get to know Ex Cathedra, to get to know our work - and to get to know me, I suppose," says Skidmore, whose soft-spoken exterior conceals a whirlwind of musical energy and enthusiasm.
"I think we're a distinctive choir because we have a unique mix of people," he says of Ex Cathedra. "Of course other choirs are going to say that, too - but we have both professional singers and singers who are amateurs, or who teach as well. That mix creates a very distinctive sound."
Festival-goers will get a chance to hear that sound in two contrasting concerts. On Friday, August 19th, Ex Cathedra will perform Rachmaninov's stunning unaccompanied Russian Orthodox Vespers by candlelight at St Canice's Cathedral; the following night, the cathedral will rock to the sound of a Latin American Vespers, when the choir will be joined by harps, lutes, violins, cornetts and sackbuts.
Both of these exotic evening musical feasts have been meat and drink to Ex Cathedra for years. "We've worked our way through several editions of the Vespers," says Skidmore cheerfully.
"Because the piece was written in Cyrillic script, you need a transliteration - and the better the quality of the transliteration, the more distinctively 'Russian' the colour. Our use of Church Slavonic (the liturgical language used in the Russian Orthodox Church) means we can shape the words in a particular and meaningful way."
There is, as Skidmore points out, an extraordinary richness to the vocal scoring of this piece, based on the traditional chants of the Russian Orthodox All-Night Vigil, which produces an accordingly intense emotional effect on the listener. "It's not typical Rachmaninov, is it? It's not like the piano concertos, that's for sure. Each voice part is split into three or four sub-divisions, which gives it a very special sound."
From eastern Orthodox to South American Catholic may seem like quite a musical leap, but for Skidmore and Ex Cathedra it has been more a voyage of discovery. The group notched up a notable success with its 2003 CD World Symphonies: Baroque Music from Latin America, and is due to release a follow-up, Moon, Sun and All Things, this autumn.
As Skidmore explains, the new disc - featuring the repertoire which will be performed at Kilkenny - will be a more colourful affair by far.
"I'm very, very proud of New World Symphonies, and it still packs quite a punch," he says. "But we recorded it before I'd ever been to Latin America."
An Arts Council grant took Skidmore to Mexico and Bolivia to meet musicians, go to festivals and dig manuscripts out of libraries - and the experiences have, not surprisingly, transformed the way in which he interprets the music.
"We've become a bit more adventurous in the colours and the rhythms we add to bring the music to life," he says. "It gives it a more Latin feel, I think. The great thing about this music is that it is a fusion of European Spanish baroque, indigenous Indian traditions and African influences. A million African slaves were brought to Latin America in a hundred years. African words are actually used in some of the pieces." As, of course, are the languages of the Incas and Aztecs, Quechua and Nahuatl.
On New World Symphonies, the tracks range from a setting of the Apostles' Creed in Quechua by a 16th-century Franciscan friar to a piece by the composer Juan de Araujo, subtitled Black Song for the Birth of Our Lord, which - as Skidmore points out in his sleeve notes - "has many Hispanic features but also introduces Cuban and west African rhythmic patterns, which eventually developed into the rhumba".
The activities of European missionaries in Latin America have not, to put it mildly, always been strictly ballroom. As a musician, is Skidmore aware of the history of cultural conflict and devastation? "Oh, absolutely," he says. "It's a very delicate area, this. My daughter is involved in Third World development, and she's based in South America at the moment, so she constantly educates me in the issues.
"Also, while I was in the Bolivian city of Sucre I was befriended by an American researcher who has spent six months of every year there for the last 15 years of his life researching Indian rebellions.
"To a certain extent, my approach was from the Utopian side of the missionary idea, while he was dealing with the other side - the dreadful things that some of these missionaries were responsible for - so we had some interesting conversations. But we didn't ever fall out about it.
"My view, ultimately, is that you can't change history. There is a heritage there of good things and bad things - so why not explore the good things? With all the unrest and revolutions that have gone on and are still going on in South America - there is some serious political upheaval going on in Bolivia at the moment - I get the feeling that people have been ashamed of their colonial past. But now they're beginning to realise that this is 300 years - at least - of the history of their people. You can't ignore it; and in some instances, you should even celebrate it. There were some wonderful relationships between priests and indigenous people. Many priests, for example, rowed in against the slave trade. There is always some good that can be enjoyed."
It is also, as Skidmore knows from first-hand experience, dangerous to make judgments on the basis of stereotyped expectations.
"When I went to the national library in Sucre, I wondered if they would allow me to photograph some of the manuscripts I was interested in - or if I'd have to write out the music by hand. And they laughed at me. They said, 'Just tell us what you want and we'll put it on CD for you'."
Skidmore and Ex Cathedra are involved in a number of festivals this summer, performing a repertoire that ranges from Bach to newly-commissioned works. As a music programmer, what is his festival credo?
"For me a festival has got to be something special," he says. "I want not just to do individual concerts, but concerts which inter-react with each other - and with the community. So we have a harp concert with Siobhán Armstrong and the Irish Consort, an oud and lute concert with Abdul Salem Kheir and David Miller, and the recital of Venetian wind music by the QuintEssential Sackbut and Cornet Ensemble. And then the big Latin American concert which brings them all together."
Red markers at the ready, then.
Kilkenny Arts Festival runs Aug 12-21. See www.kilkennyarts.ie for details. Box office: 056-7752175; info@kilkennyarts.ie
