Checking In: College music chairman a Grammy winner — sort of

He’s already known around campus as Dr. Tresler. And now, maybe, Dr. Music is in order.

Matthew Tresler, the academic chairman for music at Irvine Valley College, is a newly minted Grammy winner — by proxy, at least.

Conspirare, the Austin, Texas-based choir to which he belongs, recently won the top prize for Best Choral Performance for its album “The Sacred Spirit of Russia.” The award technically goes to the piece’s conductor, rather than the individual vocalists, but a winner is a winner, regardless.

The “Sacred Spirit” album, released on the Harmonia Mundi label, features a selection of Russian liturgical Christmas music. Tresler recently celebrated 12 years with Conspirare, and it’s far from his only ensemble: The Irvine resident also sings with the Los Angeles Master Chorale, the Santa Fe Desert Chorale and others.

A month after the Grammys, Tresler spoke with the Daily Pilot about his musical history and the reverberations of Conspirare’s big night. The following are excerpts from the conversation:

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I understand that the Grammy is given to the conductor of the piece, not each individual member of the group. That said, have you been able to see the Grammy yet?

I haven’t. I won’t until probably next year when I go back to work with the group again, because they’re based in Austin, Texas. So the Grammy will be housed there in Austin. So next year some time, I’ll get to go see it.

I’d imagine you had a Grammy-night party of some kind.

Actually, no. I think I was traveling. I was just able to watch it online when it happened, on that Sunday night, but I didn’t actually have a Grammy party. But there were a lot of people who were in town for the actual event, especially the Texans who were here for it.

Was there a lot of buzz around IVC?

Yeah, actually. Well, not beforehand, but afterward, yeah. It was pretty exciting.

So now that you’re a Grammy winner, at least indirectly, have you gotten any complaints from Kanye West?

[laughs] No. No contact from Kanye whatsoever.

Because I hate to break it to you, but Beyonce made one of the best choral CDs of all time.

Yeah?

No, I’m joking.

Oh, I see. [laughs]

So tell me about the process of that album. I understand this is Russian Christmas music?

Exactly — Russian liturgical music. There’s about 40 in the group, and they’re from all around the country, and we come together for usually a week at a time. So everyone gets the music in the mail a little ahead of time, and we prepare the music and we rehearse for about three or four days, and we do a series of concerts, usually in Austin. And for the recording projects we do, very often, we travel outside of Austin to record them. I just did one this fall — we recorded in Goshen, Indiana.

But this one was recorded in Austin, in a Lutheran church in Austin that was very appropriate for the music. And we did a series of concerts, and then we spent the next half a week or so in recording sessions in that space, with that music. So we spent a good week and a half with that repertoire. And we had Vladimir Morosan, who lives in San Diego — he’s the publisher of the scores that we used, and he’s an expert in the music and an expert in the language, in church Slavonic — he came and coached with us and was there through the process. It was a great experience, it really was.

Have you ever actually been to Russia and seen a service there?

I haven’t. I’ve sung a lot of choral Russian music around the country, but I haven’t actually sung it in Russia.

Tell me a little about Russian liturgical music. Is there a very special quality that separates it from music from other parts of the world?

In some ways. Russian music is related to the Orthodox Church, so the roots are a little bit different than some of our Western music. It’s based in a different liturgy. The chants, the music it’s based on, are different than our Gregorian chants. They have these znamenny chants, they’re called. And it’s an a cappella tradition. There’s no church organs. It’s a cappella music, and because of that, it has a very rich sonority — lots of low bass, all the way through the high soprano, lots of what we call “divisi,” meaning instead of a four-part choir, there might be an eight-, 12-, 16-part choir, sometimes double choir in the music. There’s a lot of voices that fill a big, sonorous sound.

But at the same time, because it’s liturgical music, the music can come down to just a very faint, small line, a whisper of incense smoke. It has a real wide dynamic range and a wide pitch range, so it does take a special kind of voice to sing it — to really sing it at all ends of the spectrum, I guess.

Is this something you teach your students?

We’ve done a little Russian liturgical music, but just because we’re an educational institution, we try to do a little bit of everything — you know, exposure to everything as much as we can.

How did you first get started as a singer?

Well, in school, in elementary school, I just joined the choir, and I sang through junior high and high school and knew that’s what I wanted to do. I went to college for music education, and I taught high school choir for eight years and went on to grad school, and I’ve been here for seven now. So singing’s just always been what I do.

Were there any singers that you took after in particular?

Really, for me, it’s always been about the ensemble. I do some solo work, but what really excites me musically is ensemble singing, because that ensemble experience, of course, is so, so much greater than those individual voices — what can be achieved with those voices together. There’s so much more nuance, and at the same time, there’s so much more power than can ever be created in one voice. And to me, that’s always been what’s appealing, so while I do really appreciate opera and oratorio and those things, for me it’s always been about ensemble music. And that’s what I sort of took after. That’s what I follow.

Do you think any given singer can be part of any choir? Or do the other members of the choir kind of determine whether this singer is going to be a fit with all the other voices?

Well, of course, being an educator, I espouse that anyone can sing in an ensemble, and I think people should. Social singing is a big part of our American culture, and it always has been. And there’s a choir somewhere for everyone, you know. That’s one of the great things about the fact that there are multiple choirs, is that they specialize in different music. They’re there for people with different levels of experience. But there’s a choir for everyone, and everyone can sing.