Fifty girls. One summer week. Learning to sing great sacred music.
Sacred Sound is a feature-length documentary filmed on site at the Carolina Summer Choral Residency by producers Robin Arcus and Tod Tinkham. It follows a week of the course as it actually happens: arrival and vocal auditions, the long unglamorous work of rehearsal, daily worship, and eating, drinking, and living together, through to the closing Eucharist and Choral Evensong.
How it came about
The project began at the 2012 course under music director David Briggs, when Robin Arcus first brought a film crew to Saint Mary’s School. It was in full swing by 2013, the largest course we had seen in several years, with over fifty chorister participants, David Hill as music director, David Arcus at the organ, and the Rev. Nancy Allison preaching.
When the project was announced in 2012, its purpose was stated plainly: to capture the week’s events as they unfold, and to tell the human story of challenge, determination, defeat, and triumph that a training course actually contains. Documentary was chosen as the medium because that story does not fit in a concert programme or a photograph.
The week behind the services
Most of what the public sees of a choral residency is the last two hours of it, in a beautiful building, with everyone in robes. That is the part that is meant to look effortless. This film is about the six days before it.
If you have ever wondered what a chorister’s week here is really like, or you are weighing whether to send a young singer to a course, this is the closest thing to being there.
Credits
- Producers: Robin Arcus and Tod Tinkham
- Filmed at: Saint Mary’s School, Raleigh, and the course’s church venues, during the 2012 and 2013 residencies
- Running time: 1 hour, 6 minutes
The film is hosted on Robin Arcus’s YouTube channel.