In spite of a string of rainy days, summer is officially here! Soon, neighbors and visitors will flock to the city’s neighborhood parks and downtown venues to enjoy a whole series of exciting summer cultural and musical events in the Creative Capital.  The lineup this year is bigger than ever – from the

neighborhood performing arts programs, to the summer concerts at Waterplace Park, to next weekend’s 4th of July fireworks at India Point Park, and of course,

Sound Session – Providence is getting set to bring out the best local talent there is once more.

Warming up their pipes for multiple appearances this summer is local choir, RPM Voices, led by director Dr. Clarice LaVerne Thompson.  Thanks to a grant through the city’s  Neighborhood Performing Arts Initiative, Thompson and choir is making a series of first public performances throughout Providence’s neighborhoods and listeners can finally hum along to the group’s eclectic stylings.  From traditional gospel music borne out of the African-American tradition to the hymnals from various world cultures, by design, the voices of RPM span the globe.  Everyone is invited to bring along the music of their culture and no one is ever turned away. 

 

Thompson, an adjunct lecturer at Brown, met up with City News this week at her academic headquarters at Rites & Reasons Theater for a sound check on this genre-defying musical choir. 

 

Why did you form this choir?
I formed the choir because I had several students who came up to me, had heard me perform and sing, and they wanted to know how they could study voice with me.  Well, I wasn’t here to teach voice.  I was teaching African-American folk tradition and cultural expressions.  I was doing a songwriting type course that is wrapped around the RPM method.  Eventually, out of all those requests, I did develop a vocal performance piece.  I just remember from my own personal traditions, having done voice lessons and the like, that the best training that I got was from singing in a choir.  There’s a group type of training that happens in a choir because you have your choir director, musicians, and your co-singers working right along with you.  You learn so much from each other. 

 

So since then has the choir expanded beyond the Brown community?
It always has.  When the first choir assembled, there were several Brown students.  There were some Brown staff and faculty that also participated.  But we always, from the very beginning, had members from outside the Brown community.  That was one of the missions of Rites & Reason and George Bass that it was important to him that the community be entrenched in his work and in the work that he guided the students to do here. 

 

It’s not just gospel.  I really do try to do a broad representation of music.  But I also know that the members of my choir and the people who come to sing with us look forward to the type of music that has an inspirational or spiritual connection. This year we’re going to do some new things though.  We’re going to do some patriotic and nationalistic type of music.  Most of the music we’ve done in the past, albeit inspirational or gospel or spiritual, has been

out of the African-American tradition.  So we’re going to look into some other traditions.  We’re going to look into some Jewish music.  We have several Jewish singers who come because they love to sing gospel.  But I’ve said to them, ‘we’re going to sing your music, too’. 

 

We’re going to add some things to our repertoire this year and expand out and branch out.  I’m always looking for other communities to come and join us.  I can easily say, ‘we’re going to do this song because it’s a Russian song, or we’re doing this song because it’s an Italian song,’ but I prefer it when members of those communities come and join us and bring those songs to us and help us learn them from the traditions that they have always known.  It brings a different type of genuine feel to the music. 

 

For me, for the fourth of July, it’s being able to have VIP seating! I can see the fireworks.  As a choir, we started as a workshop because people wanted to take voice lessons.  It wasn’t really a performing group to begin with.  It was really a teaching and learning group.  But I believe that if we spend the time learning a whole bunch of stuff, we should at least take an opportunity to perform it, if it’s nothing but a recital.  So that’s how the performance portion of the RPM came about.  After we go through this intensive workshop then we perform it. 

 

We used to do the performances right here at Rites & Reason.  We did that for several years and then we got the call from Black Rep to be a part of the Sound Session Gospel Brunch back in 2007.  So this is our 3rd year at gospel brunch.  The members of the choir have come back to me and said, ‘can’t we do more? We do the gospel brunch and then I don’t see you again ‘til the next year!” That is what prompted me to write for the grant and look at other opportunities and other ways to do some more performances. 

 

I really have to tip my hat off to Don King because I know just from knowing him personally that he loves music and he loves all types of music.  He does his very best to embrace all of it.  When you run an establishment like Black Rep, you can easily get bubbled into what’s contemporary, or what’s hip and happenin’ at the time, because that’s what’s going to keep the people coming through your doors.  So for him to be able to step out and say, ‘I know what people are coming through the doors for every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night,’ but also acknowledge that there’s still a population out there who want to hear a certain type of music is a good thing.

 

Doing a gospel brunch and offering that space to present spiritual and gospel music is broadening the whole arts experience for people.  And like I said, with RPM music, we don’t just want to do your traditional gospel.  We want to do some contemporary gospel.  We want to do some old school gospel.  We want to sing some spirituals and we want to sing some anthem-type stuff.  It really does make a difference – not just for the people who come and see us, but also for the people who are in the group.  Over the last six years, I’ve had over 100 people sing for the choir.  Probably the largest group I’ve had at any one time was 55.  I have students who have graduated and who will still find a way to take this upcoming week for our workshops as a vacation week from work or school to come here and be with us.  That’s really a beautiful thing.

 

Do you select all the music for the group?
It’s a collective – myself, another guy I went to school with Delbert Collins, and Chester Eugene Williams, one of my assistant choral directors.  What I’ve done this year is reach out to a couple of other people – like I said I wanted to do some Jewish music this year – so there’s a young woman by the name of Shelly Cash who plays for a Kletzma band locally.  Primarily, most of it does come from songs that I want to tap into.  I might even write an arrangement for something.

 

From where do you get your musical inspiration?
I started singing when I was 3 years old in the children’s choir at my church, Messiah Baptist Church in Yonkers, New York.  I started playing clarinet when I was nine.  I studied music in high school and played all-city and all-state band.  I got all my degrees in music.  Music is in me.  But I guess if there were one person I could say that inspires me, one person who I would just sit at his feet if I could, it would be Quincy Jones.  I’ve always had a great admiration from his work.  I get inspiration from dozens of people but I’ve always admired the work that he did in the 70s and 80s.

 

Just show up.  Send me an email and let me know you’re coming.  We’re going to do our workshop starting this Sunday from 3:00 to 7:00.  We’ll be at Rites & Reasons for six days.  Weeknights will be from 6:00 to 9:00 and towards the end of the week we’ll extend it to 10:00. I like to do that weeklong intensive workshop because it keeps people focused.  I don’t like people to have too much time to watch tv or something like that.  I want them to get up every morning humming and singing their songs and knowing that they’ll be driving in the car by 5 pm on their way here. 

 

They can come.  Anyone who wants to come is invited.  If it’s really that unbearable, we’ll find something else for them to do because I won’t turn anyone away! You know what, we’re a really loving group.  Everybody will do everything they can to make everyone comfortable and make everyone feel like their contribution is important. 

 

I want them to come and join the choir! I want them to come to the next workshop and be with us! If they don’t want to come and sing, I hope they’ll be our ambassadors and go out there and cheer.  We’re like a family.  We really are.  So sometimes we have to remember to focus because we have so much fun in the fellowship of it all.  Anybody who sees the group I hope will be able to come back and say, ‘how can my community and I become a part of this phenomenon?’  I want them to ask themselves, ‘how can I create something like this in my neighborhood?’

 

What I’d like to see happen is a workshop in every community throughout the city and build it in a way that is representative of what that community is and who resides in it.  Then in the end maybe we can combine those communities together.