The name Seraphic Fire was likely new to most outside of southern Florida, when, on August 23, the choir shot to the top of the iTunes classical charts with Claudio Monteverdi: Vespers of the Blessed Virgin 1610. The collection of 17th-century sacred work even unseated Lady Gaga, if temporarily, at position No. 27 in the overall iTunes sales rankings.
Yet founding artistic director Patrick Dupré Quigley was met with indifference when shopping Vespers to commercial labels, who were unwilling to take a chance on what they deemed an unknown.
“When the album went up on iTunes, I took a screenshot and tagged everyone [in Facebook] who had performed on the disc,” Quigley explains. “Twelve hours later, we were in the top 20!” The climb of Vespers snowballed with a frenzy of word-of-mouth and status-update viral marketing, eventually attracting the eye of NPR. The radio network’s All Things Considered interviewed Quigley and helped to bump the album from No. 6 to No. 1.
While a flood of download sales would excite any working musician, what thrills the 32-year-old most is Vespers’ success in reaching new ears. “The traditional classical audience still buys its discs in physical form,” he says. “Through social media, we reached people who wouldn’t normally go out and buy a classical album and turned them into fans. That’s the real surprise.”
Since founding the group in 2002, Quigley has hand-picked the singers of Seraphic Fire from around the country and flown them to Miami for performances in each of its past eight seasons. In an area better known for its nightclubs, the choir has a knack for filling seats, something its conductor attributes to the combination of high-level performances and the musicians’ lack of pretension. “Seraphic Fire throws away the Kabuki of classical and just leaves the musical experience,” he says. Even after an exhausting run through Bach’s B-minor Mass or Handel’s Messiah, the Yale alum and his choir make a point of interacting with audience members before heading back to the dressing rooms.
The critically acclaimed choir sat in the pop spotlight once before, having recorded the Gregorian chantlike intro to a platinum-selling record by pop diva Shakira. But the self-produced, self-released Vespers offers slightly more sophistication than Oral Fixation II. From the opening measures of the Monteverdi, there’s a glow to the voices, a clarity and nuance of diction. Quigley, who takes significant time in dress rehearsals to find the perfect acoustic placement for each vocalist onstage, and producer Peter Rutenberg find an extraordinary vocal balance that showcases Seraphic Fire’s strength: creating a luxurious ensemble blend while retaining the individual traits of each singer. That’s especially evident in the “Magnificat a 6. Voci,” which opens with an intimate solo invocation by soprano Kathryn Mueller, inviting in a simple harmony from the chamber organ, and finally pouring forth into a resounding ensemble chorale.
If the story sounds like a fairy tale, it’s not lost on Quigley. “I think the recording itself is a validation,” he says. “The success is great PR and marketing with a good dose of luck.” No major labels have come knocking just yet, but even if they do, Quigley will think twice about signing over artistic control and recording rights. In the meantime, the group has a full concert season and two CD projects in the works, one of Christmas music and the other of orchestral works by J.S. Bach. Whether or not Seraphic Fire will still wear the glass slipper for these albums remains to be seen, but according to its artistic director the momentum is undeniable: “It certainly gives us the confidence to record another project.”
- Doyle Armbrust
published in Time Out Chicago on September 15th, 2010