Cappella Romana founder Alexander Lingas passes the torch * Oregon ArtsWatch

"As Alexander Lingas beheld the shattered remains of San Francisco's Annunciation Cathedral, devastated in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake a few months earlier, he wanted to help. The singer had moved to the city in June 1990 with his new wife, Ann, a violinist who was studying at the Conservatory of Music. The couple joined the city's Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation, where Lingas, then a musicology graduate student at the University of British Columbia, became lampadarios, or assistant cantor."

"In 1988, he'd formed an early music vocal ensemble during his undergraduate years at Portland State University. The group had sung music of Monteverdi, Schutz, and other Baroque composers. Lingas had also been singing Greek and Byzantine music during church services. He knew how to put together a concert program, and he'd stayed in touch with his fellow singers in the Portland and Vancouver early music circles."

"Lingas put together a list of pieces he'd seldom or never heard live. "It was very much a young man's concert," Lingas told me in 2011, "with everything but the kitchen sink" - early Byzantine chant, Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff, all the way down to contemporary Orthodox composers John Tavener and San Francisco's Tikey Zes. After a debut performance at Portland's Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox church, the singers piled into a van and headed south."

Alexander Lingas moved to San Francisco in June 1990 with his wife Ann and joined the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation, becoming lampadarios. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake had left the cathedral in ruins, prompting a rebuilding effort. Unable to contribute money as a graduate student, Lingas offered music and organized a benefit concert in early 1991. He recruited singers from Portland and Vancouver, drawing on his early music ensemble experience and Byzantine chant practice. The eclectic program ranged from early Byzantine chant to Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff, John Tavener, and local composer Tikey Zes, debuting at Portland's Holy Trinity before traveling south and seeking a name evoking Byzantine Roman heritage and a medieval Greek religious world encompassing Rome, Western Europe, and Slavic regions.

Read at Oregon ArtsWatch * Arts & Culture News