Making sure the voices tell a story

'There isn't enough money - it's basic,' says National Chamber Choir artistic director Paul Hillier. But he is determined not to be distracted from artistic goals by funding battles, he tells Michael Dervan

THE National Chamber Choir (NCC) is an institution that was born out of a crisis. It was brought into existence back in 1991 by a group called Friends of the Choral Arts, after the RTÉ Chamber Choir had been disbanded. The national broadcaster faced a financial crisis because of restrictions imposed on it by the Broadcasting Act of 1990. The chamber choir and the project-based RTÉ Chorus were both dropped, cutbacks were imposed on the RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet, and the expansion of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra was so fully frozen that the planned size of 93 players has never been reached.

The appointment of Paul Hillier as the NCC's new artistic director was also the outcome of a crisis. At the beginning of last year there was a flurry of resignations at the choir. The chief executive, Karina Lundström (a leading light of Friends of the Choral Arts), who was engaged in an internal struggle with her board, resigned. The choir's then artistic director, Celso Antunes, and board member David Byers chose to follow suit. Once again, RTÉ money was a factor behind the scenes. The broadcaster, which had become a long-term funder of the choir, had already started a phased withdrawal of its support.

But, just as the disbanding of the RTÉ Chamber Choir yielded a positive in the foundation of the NCC, the departure of Antunes, who had brought the choir to new heights, opened the door to Paul Hillier. A founding member of the Hilliard Ensemble, and later of Theatre of Voices, Hillier is one of the most dynamic presences on the international choral scene. He's a leading expert on the music of Arvo Pärt, and from 2001 to 2007 was principal conductor of the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, a group long been associated with Pärt's music.

He has also been conductor of Ars Nova Copenhagen since 2003, and when we meet I ask him first what attracted him to work with the NCC in Ireland.

"The money!" he jokes. "No. Partly just a concatenation of circumstances. It came along at just the right time. I had just concluded my stint with the Estonian choir. But, in particular, I somehow sensed that there is an openness and a need here, maybe, to go in new directions, that there was a fresh energy here, that the singers here were up for things. There wasn't the sense that 'we know how it should be', but rather 'let's do something'. That appealed to me.

"And also I was attracted by the idea of coming to Ireland. I've hardly ever been here, although that's not really the reason to take a job. I've been working abroad for many years now, and although this, of course, is not Britain, it's very pleasant to work in a place where they speak the same language. And so many things are the same, or familiar - it has that attraction as well."

A QUESTION ABOUThis ambitions for his new choir brings one general comment ("Obviously, to do good concerts, to get more work, and generally develop - in every sense") and one very specific one: "It seems to me that it's a difficult financial climate for them. I'd like to see that change, and we've got to help it change."

Comments about funding weave in and out of the conversation, and at one point, when I ask for more detail, he says: "Well, there isn't enough money. It's very basic."

He describes the money situation as "quite acute". "It seems to me that money has been draining away in terms of structural support. The amount of money that's needed for a group like this to be in a moderately comfortable position is peanuts compared to almost anything else you can think about. It just needs the right willpower in the right places to be tapped. A little can go a very long way, but it has to be there and it has to be assured. You can't spend the whole time worrying about whether you'll have the same amount of money next year, or X per cent less. It's not unique to this place, unfortunately. It's a position I know all too well. But it takes time and energy from the important things of planning and developing artistically, and so on. One aspect of the problem touches everything else."

Hillier is a quiet-spoken individual, often ruminative in his answers, and clearly someone who has grasped the fact that one of the simplest routes to the best solutions is to begin with the right questions. He's at the stage now where he's a lot more concerned with the questions, and if he's reached any definitive answers he's not letting on.

"I'm gradually developing a sense for the repertoire that I want to do," he says. "I mapped out some ideas over the past six months or so, since I was first appointed. But only now am I really starting to work with the singers. I've just auditioned them individually. So now I've a much better sense of what they're capable of, both collectively and individually. That was essential. And I'm feeling very positive about it. It was a very pleasant and musically interesting experience.

"There's a lot of talent there. Now I'm letting the ideas move around in my mind as to what that means and what exactly it will lead to."

He wants the choir's concert seasons to have "an overall coherence", and he's identified the Irish Baroque Orchestra, the Crash Ensemble and the Irish Chamber Orchestra as potential collaborators. Resources permitting, he has a shortlist of around a dozen composers - some Irish, some from abroad - that he would like to commission. But he's not the sort of man to give carte blanche to a composer.

"It's all connected," he says. "One of the conclusions I've come to is that choral music and choral concerts need to tell a story. Because, after all, the one thing that singers have that instrumentalists don't is the text. Therefore, the crucial point is, surely, what the hell are they singing about? I'm using the word story in the wide sense, not necessarily 'Once upon a time'.

"There's nothing wrong, of course, in having a concert with beautiful pieces of music. That will always be important. But what I'm saying to a lot of the composers I'm talking to is that I want a piece where the chorus functions as a chorus. I want to tell a story. It doesn't have to be a story-story, but it matters to me what text you choose, and how you plan the piece . . .I'm not really interested in pieces where the singers have to spend two weeks just getting the notes right. I'm more interested in pieces where, within a day or two, they can do that, not because they're brilliant sight-readers, but because that shouldn't be the whole point."

HE SOUNDS FARmore excited by the challenge of working on purely musical issues with his singers than by the thrills of overcoming daunting technical challenges. On the other hand, of course, there are really difficult pieces that he cherishes.

"Sometimes a piece is so good that it's worth all the hassle," he says. "When most people think of choirs, what they probably have in mind is an amateur group. After all, it's an area of musical life in which the amateurs serious outnumber the professionals, even when it comes to partnering professional orchestras.

"For me, the urgent question is the whole identity and purpose of professional chamber choirs. What are they for? It's a very important question to me, for obvious reasons. But I also find, musically, that it's a fascinating one. If you look at music history you'll find that singing has been at the centre of it. It's only over the last 150 years or so, 200 years perhaps - which actually is a relatively short period of time - that it's changed. It's only relatively recently that instrumental music has come to dominate."

He points out that at the choral festivals for which England was so famous in the 19th century, the choirs were often professional. Nowadays, those big oratorios are the province of amateurs, whose repertoire choices are not usually adventurous, "so it interests me to look at the repertoire and say, how can we reconnect with audiences who aren't there because their cousin is singing, who actually come for a different reason?'

"We always have people who know the singers, there's nothing wrong with that. But it is a question that interests me very much, is to redefine what the repertoire is, what it's identity is, what the group's function is in society today. It's not an easy question, and I don't have any pat answers.

• Paul Hillier's National Chamber Choir programme,Singing Stories and Telling Songs , with music by Philip Glass, David Lang, John Cage, Roger Marsh, Veljo Tormis, Arvo Pärt, Tarik O'Regan, György Ligeti and Paul Patterson, tours to Limerick, Ennis, Belmullet, Dublin and Cobh