Dr. Richard Sparks
Dr. Richard Sparks is a conductor and Chair of Conducting & Ensembles at the University of North Texas. In high school, Dr. Sparks began taking singing lessons from a teacher that recognized his talents. This same teacher suggested that he take Music as his major in college. Following his teachers advice, he enrolled at the University of Washington as a Music major. While at the University of Washington, he became a member of the choir and studied under Rodney Eichenberger. During his time at UW, the choir made a trip to Europe where Richard met important conductors, professors, and was exposed to world class music in the world's finest venues. This made a huge impression on him and would prove to be a big part of his educational experience. He eventually received his Doctor of Musical Arts in choral conducting at the University of Cincinnati.
Dr. Sparks began to be involved with local community orchestras and ensembles while attending school and participated in large festivals in the north west coast region. As an educator, Dr Sparks taught at Mount Holyoke College for three years. He was at Pacific Lutheran for 18 years, where he was Director of Choral Activities. He is now in his ninth year at the University of North Texas. At UNT, Dr. Sparks is a Professor of Conducting - Director of Collegium Singers and Director of University Singers. As part of his teaching programs throughout his career, Dr. Sparks has led choral students in tours of China, Japan, England, Scandinavia, Canada and the US. He continues to conduct various community choral groups and ensembles. I recently spoke with Dr. Sparks about his career.
R.V.B. - Hello Dr. Sparks... this is Robert von Bernewitz from Long Island, New York. How are you?
R.S. - Fine, thank you Robert.
R.V.B. - Are you still in the North Texas area?
R.S. - Yes I am... at least briefly. I'm on sabbatical this semester, so I'm making some trips, and will be gone a good chunk of the time.
R.V.B. - Are you freezing?
R.S. - We are quite cold. It was 19 degrees when I took my walk this morning.
R.V.B. - That's colder than it is up here in New York.
R.S. - That's amazing. It's been about as cold as it's been since it's been here, and we're now in year nine.
R.V.B. - Well you never know. Anyway, thank you very much for taking my call, I appreciate it. You're having a wonderful career and doing a lot of great work. Your videos on YouTube are amazing.
R.S. - Thank you.
R.V.B. - The group of kids that you have there at North Texas U are world class.
R.S. - It's pretty stunning actually. I'm very happy with the kids that we have singing with the group right now.
R.V.B. - Amazing. The wonderful world of music... what drew you into it.
R.S. - Probably a high school teacher. I was singing in high school and a particular teacher was student teaching. It was in my sophomore year. I started taking voice lessons from him in the beginning of my senior year. He said to me "What are you going to major in?" I said "I don't know... maybe English or History?" He asked "Have you ever thought about majoring in Music?" I said "No." I started thinking about it and that's pretty much how that happened.
R.V.B. - That's pretty late in the big picture. Did you play any instruments in grade school?
R.S. - No. I think I played trombone for about six months, but that's hardly playing when you're a sixth grader. I got started rather late actually.
R.V.B. - Did you realize that you could sing, or did somebody tell you that you could sing?
R.S. - When I was in the seventh grade, my dad worked for Safeco Insurance and he transferred to St. Louis. I lived in Florissant, Missouri. The choir teacher there taught a beginning music class... which everybody had to take. I was one of three boys who's voices had changed. he told me "Hey, you have a really good voice. You should sing in the A Cappella choir next year. The next year I moved back to the Seattle area... as my dad got transferred back. I decided "Gee... he told me I could sing... so I should sing." My mother always sang in the church choir, so I was around that all the time. But we didn't have a piano at home. My parents musical background was growing up in the big band era. They were from southern California. That was their music, but my mom sang in the church choir, so that was always around.
R.V.B. - Did you ever sing popular music or were you always on the classical side of things?
R.S. - I was interested in it. I wouldn't say I sang a lot of it. I did musicals in high school. I sang Curley in Oklahoma when I was a junior. I sang Harold Hill in Music Man when I was a senior, but that was really the last musical theater that I did at that time. I certainly listened to pop music but was not particularly my focus ever.
R.V.B. - Did you like The Beatles?
R.S. - Sure. I liked the popular groups of the time... certainly. I listened to some in college but I began increasingly more interested in classical music. So I did much more of that at that time.
R.V.B. - How did you enjoy your college years at Washington University? Was it a special time period for you?
R.S. - Yes. It was a special time. As an undergraduate at The University of Washington - Rodney Eichenberger was there at the time. Later he was at USC, and later down at Florida State University. Rod was a very big influence at that time. I worked with him as an undergraduate and enjoyed that. I was with the university choir and we made a tour to Europe. It was part of a big symposium in Vienna. I think I turned 21 on that trip. It was a great experience. I had already become somewhat interested in baroque music at the time. I stayed over - after the tour was over - in Europe for a period of time. I went to visit the Westfälische Kirchenmusikshule, which Wilhelm Ehmann was the conductor at the time. I spent a little time in Stuttgart on two different weekends, watching Helmuth Rilling work. When I finished that, I went to London briefly. I went to Cambridge, to Even Song at Kings, and St. Johns, and those kinds of things. It was all a big influence. In the summer of 72, I went to the Oregon Bach Festival, where Rilling was, of course. It was only the third year of the festival. It was much more of a local festival before it became an international event. We did it because it was an anniversary year. We did an all Schütz program. We sang the B minor Mass as the big work. That was enormously influential.
R.V.B. - First of all, the trip to Europe at such an impressionable age, really had to enlighten you as far as the real roots of the music.
R.S. - Absolutely. I had already been listening to recordings of these groups. So I knew about Ehmann... I knew about Rilling... I knew about David Willcocks... and these kinds of people. But it was quite an experience to visit in person and hear what they were doing. It was a great experience.
Another really wonderful experience was in around 1976, when Robert Scandrett - who passed away a couple of years ago - was at Western Washington University in Bellingham... I got to know him from that same high school conductor that I worked with, who had been doing a Masters degree there. He organized a study tour in England. It was a four week study tour that a group of us went on. That was pretty unbelievable with the kinds of things we heard. We heard the earliest version of The Kings Singers. They weren't known in the US at all, at that point... a performance of The War Requiem. We watched Roger Norrington rehearse with his Heinrich Schütz group. I actually had a meeting in his home with a group of students. All sorts of things... Alfred Deller - a year before he died - with the festival that he was doing. Just a fantastic bunch of experiences. I heard two or three opera's at Covent Garden. We went to see a performance at Aldeburgh, where Peter Pears was singing. We briefly saw Britten and Peter Pears who was driving by. He was already ill at the time, and died a year later. Both of those experiences were fantastic. I learned an incredible amount from them.
R.V.B. - That sounds like a solid foundation. I see that while you were still in school, you founded Seattle Pro Musica. That was primarily a Baroque music group?
R.S. - The first group I started was associated with an orchestra in town - a community orchestra program. It became an appendage to them and was a chamber choir... that did a wide variety of repertoire. It was mostly a baroque repertoire but we did other kinds of things. We did romantic repertoire and other things. The second year we went independent with that group. I also started a group called "The Bach Ensemble." It was specifically to do some baroque work. We were doing Bach cantatas once a month. It was what became The Pro Musica Singers for a period of time. That group still did a variety of music. We certainly did some baroque music. We did the Mozart Requiem... we did the Haydn Harmoniemesse... I did A Cappella works by Poulenc, Brahms and contemporary works as well. So it was a mix. I did those groups for seven years... from when I was 23 until I was 30. On the last three years of that - because I worked with a lot of instrumentalists - either with The Bach Ensemble or the chamber choir - we all decided "Let's do a chamber orchestra as well." The chamber orchestra did their own independent concerts as well as our other performances.
R.V.B. - Did you have any favorites of the old masters, that you particularly liked to do?
R.S. - Well obviously Bach. Bach was sort of the center of the interest. Doing a Bach cantata, essentially once a month during the academic year, was a huge thing to do... and a great thing to be involved in. We did works from other composers as well. As that group evolved, we would do some other pieces on the first part of the concert. During the Schütz anniversary year, we did a piece of Schütz on each of those programs. That's always music that I loved. We did instrumental or chamber works by Telemann, Vivaldi and all sorts of other baroque composers at the time. With the chamber choir, we did some renaissance music as well. That wasn't a huge focus of what we did but we did The Byrd Mass for Four Voices, to Palestrina, and those kinds of works. I had a pretty broad interest at that time. Certainly in times of early music, my focus was Bach... and I still love those works.
R.V.B. - Well, there's a lot of people from the school that there is Bach, and then there is everything else.
R.S. - Hahaha. Yeah... I do love everything else.
R.V.B. - Haha. You chose the University of Cincinnati for your post graduate work, and you concentrated on Swedish music at that time. Was there anything that sparked you into that interest?
R.S. - I had become interested earlier, when I became aware of Eric Ericson's recordings at that time. There was this Blue Box recording of Five Centuries of European Choral Music, which the Swedish Radio Choir and Eric's chamber choir did... some with both groups combined, and some with one group or the other. That ranged from renaissance music - early madrigals - all the way up to contemporary music. I was just fascinated by the sound of the Radio Choir... the amazing vocal sound that they created. The purity of their intonation... and of course this wonderful music. That was the first exposure to big pieces like the Strauss Motette and all sorts of other repertoire that was on that. They later released LP's that were all contemporary music, ranging from Ligety to "you name it." they were really difficult and challenging.... some Swedish music. I already knew those groups.
I first saw Eric in 1982 at the Louisville Convention, when I didn't get to meet him much but I saw him work. I had just interviewed at Cincinnati for their graduate program. They were putting together a demo group that Eric was working with, because The Radio Choir was singing at that conference in Nashville. They put this group together for master classes that Eric did with conductors. So I sang with that group. Not long after I came with The Pacific Lutheran University - where I started in 1983 - Eric was coming through with his chamber choir from the conservatory in Stockholm. They were singing at the (ISME) conference... The Society for Music Education... in Eugene, Oregon. A friend of mine - Bruce Browne - who taught at Portland State University... I had gotten to know Bruce because when I was at The University of Washington as an undergraduate, he was a Doctoral student there. Bruce had gotten to know Eric and said "Hey, they're coming over here. Could you sponsor them at your workshop, at Pacific Lutheran?" I said "Of course." That was the summer of 85. Eric's chamber choir was there and I got to know him fairly well. When I was trying to figure out a dissertation topic at The University of Cincinnati, it became a very logical thing for me to think about, writing about Swedish choral music. So when I was in residence of Cincinnati in 1989, I made my first trip to Sweden. I was really trying to sort out what my dissertation topic would be. At that time, following Eric around with the various groups, I heard other groups that I admired and enjoyed. I met lots of people and spent the entire summer of 1990 in Sweden, doing research for the dissertation. That's kind of how all that happened. Even though Eric does some early music, that's not his focus. The focus of this was really Swedish A Cappella choral music since 1945. It was a survey - in essence - of that music and it was a great experience.
R.V.B. - For the average layperson like myself, what sets Swedish choral music from 1945 apart from other choral music from 1945.
R.S. - I think the big thing was, Sweden was neutral, so after World War II, they didn't have the destruction... they didn't have the loss of a generation of performers, composers and everyone else. Once the war was over, and the isolation was over, they went out and tried to find out as much information as they could. During that time, a group that Eric was associated with - which was a lot of composers, Eric and a few other performers - became really interested in what was really happening in the rest of the world. They started inviting those composers to Sweden and Stockholm. The Swedish composers went out and met with everybody they possibly could. It was a very progressive - avant garde, if you will - approach to choral music. Eric - who took over the Radio Choir in 1952 - was of course asked to perform all of this music. Then Swedish composers started writing similar kinds of music. You could kinda see every possible development of what was contemporary music at the time. You could see it in various aspects, from 12 tone music to what you would call "aleatoric chant music", where there are lots of elements that are left up to the performers, at the moment, for performance improvisation... and all of the other things that happen. So in terms of the choral music that was being written, Sweden was in a sense, a little microcosm of what else was happening in the world. Of course with the Radio Choir - this kind of professional choir - that was there as an instrument for Swedish composers, could compose work that was challenging, and know that they would get really good performances from the Radio Choir. It was a virtuous cycle that led to more composers writing more music... composers that might not otherwise write choral music. There was some very interesting music being written that would be the point of my dissertation.
R.V.B. - That sounded like a wonderful environment for creativity.
R.S. - Yes, absolutely. Eric was personal friends with a lot of composers that were very influential at the time. They had gone to school together and were a part of this group of - then students, that became important in various ways. It was kind of an amazing time. Eric said at the time... he was sitting with the Radio Choir, and he would be told "OK... Stravinsky is coming this year. Then Dallapiccola, Hindemith, and all these other people, and you're going to prepare all these works for them." It was a pretty amazing time I think, just because everyone could go to Stockholm, where they got performances by The Radio Orchestra... The Radio Choir, or both combined. It was a magical time for them in many ways.
R.V.B. - It sure sounds like it. You had a fairly long tenure at Pacific Lutheran. I see that you conducted a lot of different pieces. Did you do some traveling with that group of kids as well?
R.S. - Yes... for sure. When I was first there, we were touring every year. Some of those tours, of course, were in the United States. We did an East Coast tour... lots of tours up and down the I-4 corridor, to Southern California and back. Some tours of the Northwest, but we also made a tour to England. We made a tour to Japan, China and Hong Kong. In my last year there, we made a tour to Scandinavia, where we were doing concerts in both Norway and Sweden. We did some big works. I conducted Britten's War Requiem, and a number of other pieces. That was a highlight, I think... to get a chance to do the War Requiem. I think it's a fantastic work but it's complicated enough that not many universities do it. So it was a great time.
R.V.B. - So in your travels, were there any venues that you performed at, that were really spectacular sounding, or just had an aura from the music that came out of them in the past?
R.S. - Well obviously if you go on these tours to Europe, you perform in fabulous cathedrals and other spaces. We did a concert in Canterbury, in England. We did a concert at Ely Cathedral. We did a concert at Clair College in Cambridge. One of the most fascinating ones was a small church in Birmingham, which just had perfect acoustics. There was a very small audience there but the recording that we did was released on cassette. We had this recording engineer on that tour. I don't know if it was ever released on CD, but we just had this perfect venue, so everything from that recording comes from there. When we were in Stockholm, we sang in a beautiful church in Bergen.
In Norway, we sang in a beautiful small church in Oslo. We sang in Uppsala Cathedral. We sang at St. Jakobs in Stockholm... where Gary Graden was for many years, and still heads up the St. Jakobs Chamber Choir. We had lots of great experiences.
R.V.B. - I see that you subbed once for Robert Shaw.
R.S. - He had, had a history with The Anchorage Music Festival, earlier in his career. Then, he was too busy with other things, but he was coming back to do the Brahms Requiem. Somebody who I knew was the administrator of that festival. I got this call from him in the spring that Shaw had to cancel. He apparently had a couple of mini-strokes and his doctors told him "You have to cut back. You can't travel as much." So he was out and I was lucky enough to get invited to come up and conduct the Brahms Requiem. I never got to meet him but I thought about going to his workshops.
R.V.B. - He was out of the Georgia area, right?
R.S. - He was out of Atlanta, but he did a series of workshops at Westminster College during the summer. Then a series at Carnegie Hall and also a series in France, where he had owned a home. Unfortunately I never managed to do any of those. I've had many friends that had sung with him, and knew him.
R.V.B. - In a way, you're carrying a torch because the work that you are doing is fantastic and helpful to the next generation of singers and performers. It's reminiscent of Shaw.
R.S. - Thanks.
R.V.B. - You have a great career going on and I congratulate you on that. How did you wind up at The University of North Texas?
R.S. - I was in Sweden in 2008, and Robert Sund - who conducts Orphei Drängar... a great men's chorus, was retiring. I was going to be there already because I was invited to this big retirement concert and dinner, that they were having. I happened to meet Jerry McCoy - because they had invited this group of his international friends. He knew Jerry McCoy - who was the Director of Choral Studies at The University of North Texas. It's the first time I had met Jerry, although we both knew of each other from our work. He said "We've got a job that you might be interested in." I ended up applying for that job and getting it. Part of the attraction of the job at North Texas was that Jerry was very, very good, and he had a good program that was well known. They had a great doctoral program. But also, part of my job was going to be working with the Collegium Singers, that works with a period instrument orchestra. Given my background in Baroque music - the fact that I had worked over a long period of time with period instruments - that was very attractive to me. That's how I ended up in Texas.
R.V.B. - That's a good move for you and a great thing for the kids of Texas. Like I said at the outset. The YouTube performances are impressive and it almost seems like it's above college level.
R.S. - I think that what has happened in the last few years, in particular, is we've been able to draw more and more of our really talented Graduate student singers into The Collegium Singers. That has made a really huge difference. They are extraordinarily talented. Some of them have not done much baroque music before but they've kind of figured out that The Collegium Singers is a great place to sing. They get to do solo work. They get to sing a repertoire that otherwise they wouldn't sing. This last year, we've had singers that were both of the "Queen of the Nights" in the Mozart opera that they were doing. One of them was Pamina and one was Papageno. We've been able to draw really great singers. They have been quite willing to sing with this group and they are very accomplished. In that sense, yes! It's far above what you would normally hear from a college or university choir. We have wonderful instrumentalists as well. We're able to do some things - Our St. John Passion" from last spring... which is on YouTube... is certainly one of the best things that we've done. I probably wouldn't be able to do these things at another university.
R.V.B. - What are you satisfied with in your place of helping people in music? What drives you to do this.
R.S. - I've always been driven to do that. My early experiences with community groups... semi-professional groups... whether it's been teaching at Mount Holyoke College for three years, and then Pacific Lutheran for 18 years... I'm now at my 9th year at UNT... I just love sharing that material. I love seeing students grow. It's also been really fun at UNT because, even though I'm not their primary teacher, I work a lot with our graduate choral conductors... both Masters and Doctoral students. It's really fun to work with them and watch them grow. See them open up and explore new areas, and of course seeing them go off and be very successful college, and university teachers, and professors on their own. I've always loved working with students, watching them grow, and being successful on their own.
R.V.B. - What do you have going on these days. What are you working on at present?
R.S. - I'm actually beginning a sabbatical. I have a couple of projects. One has to do with looking at the singers who are in some of the professional choirs, and are very active in the growing movement of professional choirs, where all the singers don't necessarily come from the city where the choir is based. These are singers that travel all over the US singing in these professional ensembles. These are ensembles like Seraphic Fire in Miami... Conspirare in Austin... The Santa Fe Desert Chorale - I was a guest conductor there a year and a half ago. These singers are very high level - both as singers and ensemble musicians. I think it's a very interesting movement that's going on right now. I leave next Tuesday for the Boston area to watch a few groups. Then I'll go up to New Hampshire to watch a few rehearsals of a professional group called Skylark. I know a few people who sing in Skylark, including one of our Doctoral conductor students. He is one of their Basses. A little later I'll be in Miami to watch Patrick Quigley with Seraphic Fire doing the St. Matthew Passion. Then I'll be developing a questionnaire about the background of these singers and how did they gain the skills that got them to the place they are... which is a very high level. The idea will draw some conclusions about what we at a college/university level can do to prepare our students for this as a career. It's really kind of a new career in essence. Then I'll be back in the Northwest for a good chunk of time, from March to the end of May. I'm conducting the May concert for The Portland Symphonic Choir. I'll be a judge in a high school festival in Calgary, Alberta. I'm going to the Northwest ACDA Conference. At some point I'll be figuring out what I'm going to conduct next year.
R.V.B. - What fantastic things to be doing! It sounds like a nice variety. It sounds like it's constructive. It also sounds like there's a little fun in there.
R.S. - There certainly is.
R.V.B. - You're lucky to have this life of music and you seem to be making the best of it. I appreciate you taking this time with me.
R.S. - Happy to do it!
Interview conducted by Robert von Bernewitz
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For more information on Dr. Richard Sparks visit The North Texas University faculty page. music.unt.edu/faculty-and-staff/richard-sparks
For more information on this site contact Robvonb247 (at) gmail (dot) com
