After 20 years as the music director of the Northampton chamber choir Pioneer Valley Cappella, Geoff Hudson is passing the baton.
Hudson will celebrate his retirement with performances this Friday, May 8 at All Saints’ Church in South Hadley at 7:30 p.m. and on Saturday, May 9 at Edwards Church in Northampton at 7:30 p.m.
Each show will feature his new work, “Four Sacred Pieces,” alongside music by modern and historical composers. Hudson initially conceived “Four Sacred Pieces” in 2022 after the death of a friend’s mother.
“Without really thinking about it, I just sat down at the piano and started playing, and it turned into a piece,” he said. It became an “Ave Maria,” but the song alone was “not really long enough to go out into the world, so it sat around for a couple of years.” This past fall, he wrote three additional pieces to complete the set.
In the concert, each of Hudson’s works will be paired with a piece by another composer from an older era using the same text: “Ave Maria” by Rachmaninoff, “Dona nobis pacem” by William Byrd, “Alleluia” by Henry Purcell, and “Haec dies” by Osbert Parsley.
“When you have a chance to program something by a composer named Osbert Parsley, you just have to do it,” Hudson said. “And it turned out I really loved the piece as well.”
Hudson decided now was the right time to retire in part because he had conducted the repertoire he most desired for the group and wanted to focus more on composing. As he put it, composing “has always been my first musical love.”
“I love working with the group. I treasure our Thursday-night rehearsals and the amount of preparation that goes into planning a season and picking repertoire. I just wanted to use my time in a different way,” he said. “Also, after 20 years of hearing me say things, they need to hear somebody else.”
Hudson first joined the group 25 years ago and stepped into the director role when the previous leader departed. Hudson drew on his own experience with choral conducting to take over the role at the group’s Thursday night rehearsals.
“For me, those Thursday nights are more important than the performances, because sometimes everything goes perfectly in the performance, and sometimes it doesn’t,” he said. “To know that on a Thursday night in March, we had this piece and it was just brilliantly alive — those are the moments that I’m really proud of.”
One of his recurring challenges was balancing the “musical progress” of the choir with the busy lives of his singers, who include doctors, professors and teachers. “I think it’s important that we don’t let music become something that other people do for us, but that we make it ourselves,” he said.
The biggest hurdle, however, was the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced the group to take a long hiatus.
“I knew that choral music was important to me, but I didn’t know how important it was until I didn’t get to do it for two years,” he said.
While the pandemic highlighted the importance of connection for many people, Hudson sees choral music as a bridge to that intimacy in an era where the genre has faded from the mainstream.
“I think singing is the original human musical expression,” he said. “We all carry around these instruments with us. A lot of us sing throughout the day, just walking around alone. But it’s one of those things, when you do it together with other people, it takes on a new dimension. It’s almost like magic.”
Hudson believes the medium is vital in a digital age. “I think we all spend so much time isolated in our little digital cubby holes that to do something where it’s all about being in the same room with other people and really listening and aligning your vibrations with them — it’s incredibly moving, and I feel like it’s something that we really need at this point in history,” he added.
While Hudson is not involved in choosing his successor, he offered one piece of advice for whoever follows him: “The world is full of great music. Don’t perform any music you don’t love.”
Admission to each concert is free, but donations are welcome. For more information about Pioneer Valley Cappella, visit pioneervalleycappella.net.
