The Oriana Singers fall silent this Christmas season with retirements of the Metcalfes

The Oriana Singers featured Handel’s Concerto Grosso and a Bach cantata at the group’s concert in May at the College Street Congregational Church in Burlington. The performance was joyous, said the man who conducted it, William Metcalfe.

“I call it a barnburner of a concert. It was a terrific concert,” Metcalfe said. “The audience was thrilled by the whole thing, so I went home thinking, ‘Why should I stop doing it?’”

Two weeks later, Metcalfe knew he should stop. Time helped him realize he wasn’t excited about organizing another concert. Metcalfe, 82, and his wife, Elizabeth, 81, decided to step down from the vocal group they co-founded 36 years ago.

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Normally, local music fans would have listened this month to The Oriana Singers perform a rousing Christmas-season concert, possibly Handel’s “Messiah.” Instead, the group has fallen silent, for the time being if not forever. The Metcalfes will spend the holidays at their home on Brookes Avenue in Burlington, entertaining their children and their families.

“I was proud of the choir for A) just how good they got to be and B) that they stayed around for a long time,” William Metcalfe said last week in a conversation at the couple’s home of 51 years.

The Metcalfes – from here on they shall be referred to as Bill and Liz, as that’s pretty much what everyone calls them – co-founded The Oriana Singers at the University of Vermont in 1981. Bill Metcalfe, a professor, served as chairman of both the music and history departments before his retirement in 1998. Liz Metcalfe also taught at the university.

The Oriana Singers grew out of the UVM Baroque Ensemble, which gave Bill Metcalfe the chance to scratch his itch for music from the Baroque and Renaissance periods. Liz Metcalfe often played harpsichord at the group’s concerts. “If you get early enough there were no pianos,” she said, referring to the instrument that came into existence around 1700.

The first Oriana Singers concert, March 8, 1981 at UVM’s Fleming Museum, featured Elizabethan and Jacobean quartets and madrigals interspersed with readings from Shakespeare. The secret to Oriana, Bill Metcalfe said, was taking on a high-class repertoire with “spirited energy.” The experience was about “not only the fun of singing,” he said, “but the fun of singing hard stuff.”

Tom Hyde joined The Oriana Singers in 1987, drawn by a similar love for Baroque and Renaissance music.

“Oh, man, I have had so much fun being in Oriana Singers. It’s up there with having a kid, I have to tell you,” said Hyde, a retired computer programmer who lives in Burlington. “Bill is funny and clever. Really he is not a rigid conductor. He depends a certain amount on the skill of the singers. But he does come in with a huge knowledge of the music.”

The Oriana Singers gave Bill and Liz Metcalfe great joy as they led the group through compositions by Mozart, Beethoven and Vivaldi as well as more-modern composers such as Stravinsky and Menotti. “The thrill of the sound of a really good choir is not indescribable,” Bill Metcalfe said, “but it’s really special.”

The singers became renowned locally for their holiday concerts. Bill Metcalfe noted that at well over two and a half hours, Handel’s “Messiah” requires a big commitment from singers, musicians and listeners alike, but pays off with “one fantastic piece after another.”

“You know it will come out right,” Bill Metcalfe said, “and you will leave feeling uplifted.”

Yet he couldn’t bring himself to lead one more Christmas-season performance. The good feelings from that May concert didn’t last, and the Metcalfes, who talked around the time of Bill Metcalfe’s birthday each July about whether they would continue with the group, decided that concert would be their last.

“Better too early” to step aside “than too late,” Liz Metcalfe said.

She is playing harpsichord with other choirs this holiday season, but her husband is sitting this Christmas out for the first time in decades. He gave “pretty minimal” thought to doing a Christmas concert this year, but still feels the void.

“Sure, yeah, I miss the concert. I don’t miss the rehearsals very much,” he said, adding that he was half-joking about the rehearsals. “And yet I know it’s the right thing to do.”

Hyde, who joined The Oriana Singers three decades ago, said it looked like the group was done when the Metcalfes retired.  “I figured, ‘OK, that’s the end,’ because I don’t know how we’ll ever be able to continue on to find another conductor - and pay them - who can do all the things that Bill and Liz did,” Hyde said.

Yet the remaining group is making plans to continue. “The excitement is so great that it really looks like we are going to have a successor group,” according to Hyde. He said UVM music professor David Neiweem will lead a new group called the Aurora Chamber Singers, who will perform a program of material to be announced that will take place May 13 at the College Street Congregational Church.

Bill Metcalfe isn’t closed off to the idea of conducting again. He’s not ready to lead a concert from rehearsal to performance, but if someone asked him to step in for a conductor of Handel’s “Messiah” at the last minute it would be a different story.

“I would say, ‘Sure,’” Metcalfe said. “I can hear those wonderful ‘Messiah’ sounds.”

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at 660-1844 or bhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com. Follow Brent on Twitter at www.twitter.com/BrentHallenbeck.