Director Amelia LeClair takes a bow with her Cappella Clausura. Sam Brewer photography
Every kid with a musical bent has fantasized by waving their arms, conducting an imaginary orchestra.
For Amelia LeClair, it wasn’t a fantasy. It was her only way to make real music.
The founder and director of Cappella Clausura, the ambitious vocal ensemble that specializes in contemporary women composers as well as “the nuns,” as LeClair calls them—early-music pioneers like Barbara Strozzi and Hildegard von Bingen—had to find a way to record her sixteen singers and instrumentalists.
With live performances on hold, Cappella Clausura came together virtually to record Chiara Margarita Cozzolani’s “Magnificat.” The process began with LeClair, alone.
“I recorded myself silently conducting,” says the Newton resident. “I sent that to Cathy Liddell, and she put down the continuo part on theorbo. We sent that to the singers on Dropbox, and they each recorded their part on their iPhones.
“So the singers were in a room alone with nothing to accompany except theorbo and my gestures.”
Not exactly the intimate, communal experience that both musicians and audiences seek out at Cappella Clausura performances. But without live concerts, with singers at even higher risk than most musicians, a painstakingly managed virtual recording will have to suffice.
“Our whole season was cancelled,” LeClair says. “Like everybody we’ve attempted to move to virtual presentation.
“The video editor (Christopher Pitts) was literally putting his phone in front of the computer, and I was trying to hear, with the internet being spotty. It took six months.”
Six months, with a thousand or so iPhone hours, to recreate ten minutes of a seventeenth-century sacred setting. Listen to it (youtube.com/watch?v=3xBlzhDH3es); it was worth it.
“We’re going back to our roots,” she says of Cozzolani’s “Magnificat”—a work from one of “the nuns.” “If we can only do one piece, this ‘Magnificat’ is part of a masterpiece. It’s grand like the Monteverdi ‘Vespers.’ You can do it with orchestra, with one instrument—whatever. That’s the way it was in the convent. I thought, ‘Let’s do it.’ ”
LeClair founded Cappella Clausura in 2004, and has since steadily built a following. The ensemble’s mix of early music and new work from composers like Patricia Van Ness, Hilary Tann, Elena Ruehr and others has struck a chord.
For now, that chord remains silent, apart from online presentations. LeClair has spent much of the pandemic period in her Truro getaway with her husband—“we’ve never had this much time to be here.” Cappella Clausura will return, she insists.
“Hilary Tann has asked us to record her choral legacy,” she says. “When I put the word out on the project, the singers jumped on it. They’re dying to work and get back together. We’ll find a space. Thinking late spring.”
The ensemble has also been releasing short videos on its Facebook page—“Concerts in Episodes”—while waiting for a chance to perform live—“to get together, and respond to other musicians in space,” LeClair says.
“Right now, Cappella Clausura consists of me,” she says. “We had to let go our executive director. We’re on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and my eblast to 1500 people. Other than that we’re at a loss.”
Creating online performances feels like a stopgap measure. “If there is an upside, it’s hard to gauge,” she says. “Elena Ruehr had a premiere in California recently, and it was wonderful to be able to hear it. That was an upside. But I watch a lot of theater—and in little squares, that’s the downside.”
She knows her singers will come back when performances are safe; she’s hoping that goes for the audience she’s built over the past two decades as well.
“Music has come back around,” she says, “from an academic sinkhole to beautiful stuff. That’s part of the reason to champion living composers, as well as the nuns. We should be putting it out there all the time.
“I think the reason we built our audience was that we were doing something really new—women’s music. There are enough people who are curious and intellectual. They showed up, and we’ve kept them.”
Keith Powers covers music and the arts for Gannett New England, Opera News and Leonore Overture. Follow @PowersKeith; email to keithmichaelpowers@gmail.com.