Goodnight Moon - Washington Concert

There are moments in music-making which take your breath away, that give you a shiver of visceral excitement or that move you profoundly. These are the moments for which we go to concerts. They sometimes sneak up on you and sometimes they grow as you sense the emotional impact of the performers’ vision. And then there are those unusual ones which you know are coming and they hit you anyway. The performances of “Goodnight Moon” being given by Barker’s choir on tour have been doing that time after time.

This is a stunning choral rendition by Eric Whittaker of an American children’s book by Margaret Wise Brown, very well-known in the States, but not so much in Australia.

Barker shared in its recent commissioning and the choir has been giving “premier” performances in the cities and towns we have visited. Every time, some people are in tears; some in the audience, even the performers. Tonight was the best performance yet, given in the wonderful Hearst Auditorium at the National Cathedral School in Washington. I was sitting in the orchestra with the students, waiting to play in the combined choir items, so I had a view of the stage and the audience. EVERYONE in the US knows this book, either from having read it, having had it read to them or reading to a child. Or all of the above.  So when my colleague Peter Ellis introduces this work, the audience nods and they think they know what’s coming. And then they all sit forward in their seats, their faces tilted slightly upwards and the look on their faces changes; “Tell me a story”, they say.

There are so many levels of resonance in this shared experience. The younger ones remember that time when this simple story – which chronicles a child’s goodnight ritual – was a totally magic, perhaps nightly event, and the older ones take an unexpected moment of time travel and find themselves in that fragile moment when their child was oh so innocent and vulnerable.

But just to retell the story would not be enough. Whittaker has created a mini-masterpiece that captures all the things about this special time and then transforms it into a work of art that transcends any idea of it being “just” a children’s story. And you know it’s a masterpiece because every night it gets you right where music really matters. Tears were welling in the eyes of people in the audience tonight by the second line. Apart from my own response to this music, I find such unfiltered vulnerability quite moving, so I had to turn away. But in the choir, the singers are also totally in this moment, both telling the story and living it. (It is really not so long ago when such books were their bedtime ritual and not Facebook and YouTube!) And in the choir also are tears being shed and a transcendent moment being shared.

Music can be so many things; exciting, diverting, entertaining, challenging, beautiful, funny, monumental…. But some moments of this trip have also allowed the students to experience what I am sure will be some of the most special moments of their musical lives.

David Saffir