Choral director Harin Amirthanathan pursues a multifaceted career as a singer, choral conductor, designer, and educator. He is currently the Choral Director of the Colombo Philharmonic Choir – a job post (we learnt during our conversation with him) that he almost refused. He also directs Contempo, the past pupils’ choir of St. Bridget’s Convent, Colombo, as well as his own choir in Negombo, Vox One. Additionally, he is also the chorus master of the Chamber Music Society of Colombo.
The Colombo Philharmonic Choir is one of the oldest and longest-surviving professional choirs in the country that has seen many prestigious conductors before him. Amirthanathan is actually the youngest to have received this position, which is quite an impressive feat, if you ask us.
Amirthanathan was appointed as conductor back in 2017 and participated in his first concert as the conductor in 2018, which is how it all started. Music has always been part of growing up for Amirthanathan, especially because his mom’s family has a rich Goan heritage and his father’s Tamil heritage. His grandfather too studied in Bombay and had sung with one of the best choirs at the time, under the famous choral conductor and organist Charles Velu (1920-2004).
“Music was always at home and we used to play choral music because of our involvement in the church, so it was quite natural that I developed a liking to music: It was like taking a duck to water,” he commented.
Conducting is a recent career choice for him. Having lived in Negombo and Kandy during his youth, there was a lot of travelling to Colombo for the sake of good music. So at some point back in 2010, Amirthanathan thought that it was time for him to try something different.
He thought to himself “why not come up with my own choir in Negombo?” Upon which, he called a few friends and began the choir Vox One – which means “one voice”. He put together a group of his pupils at the time, some of his friends that had been singing in choirs, and even some other music enthusiasts who couldn’t really travel to Colombo to be a part of a professional choir. With all these people, he formed Vox One as a professional choir. “We paid the singers, I started building a huge library of music, and this was my starting point as a choral conductor,” he shared.
The choir gave him the opportunity to practise conducting and to discuss music; it also gave the choristers the opportunity to learn to read music. For him, the inability of the choristers to read music was a challenge, as he grew up in choirs where everyone knew how to read music, so he had to also train them to appreciate the art and understand the right points. Amirthanathan himself would undergo master classes in conducting with names like Gregory Rose, guest conductor from Oxford. He would request prestigious conductors for master classes because Sri Lanka didn’t have a school for conducting, nor did we have many conductors that are trained in the art of choral conducting.
Having made quite the name for himself in his field, and performing at many renowned concert venues locally and internationally, we asked Amirthanathan what the highlight of his career was, to which he said: “It was my first concert as conductor of the Colombo Philharmonic Choir in November 2018. I had a very ambitious programme that year, singing Messe solennelle in C-sharp minor, Op. 16 by Louis Vierne (1870-1937), the French organist and composer of Notre-Dame de Paris.”
“They set standards for choir and pipe organ, which is something quite groundbreaking. It was written in the French tradition of choral singing and organ music with a variety of rhythms, textures, and moods,” Amirthanathan described, adding that the great use of dissonances, chromatic passages, and dynamic shading brought out the quintessential beauty of French choral music in the early 20th Century. Pulling this off at his first concert set certain standards for him, so he commented that he will always cherish this concert.
Another memorable moment for him was his time at the Yale School of Music in the US, where he conducted at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival 2019, which just so happens to be one of the oldest chamber music festivals in North America. He even won a fellowship with 12 other choral conductors from around the world, so his time there and conducting this wonderful chorus was something he’d never forget.
As Amirthanathan has been in the music industry for so long, we asked him for his opinion on the future of choral music in Sri Lanka.
“Where choral music is concerned, it’s very encouraging to see lots of new choirs sprouting out in different parts of the country now. And also, with more access to the internet and YouTube, anyone can be a part of this field now,” he commented. He also added that back in the day, it was only concentrated in Colombo, Kandy, and the schools that had a choral tradition.
He did concede that churches too had choirs, but it was not at a professional level. Now, he observed that kids are more open to this genre as music is more readily available. “There is a new approach where young choirs are making their way into choral music, which is very encouraging. Nowadays, these young choirs have done especially well in singing along the lines of musicals and choral pop.”
Amirthanathan noted that Sri Lanka now has many well-known all-female and all-male choirs as well as mixed voice choirs that have really gone to greater heights in that genre, whereas his genre is more of an academic approach – more along the lines of choral classical music, which is not being practised that often. “Some people may think that it’s outdated, or some may think it’s too much work, or that one needs to know a great deal of music to attempt these works,” he explained, adding that new conductors are making it more approachable to the regular audience. He stated that the future’s looking good for the industry.
Given the deteriorating situation with the country’s battle against Covid-19, asking if he had anything coming up for the year was almost redundant, and Amirthanathan lamented that he had so much in store for the year 2020 but none were successful.
“We had a performance of Bach’s Mass in B minor, BWV 232, which we were supposed to perform with the Paranjoti Academy Chorus in Bombay, accompanied by the Symphony Orchestra of India. Everything was ready and sold out, but we had to cancel a week leading up to the concert,” he explained sadly. His second concert was also scheduled to take place in September last year at Wolvendaal Church, with renaissance choral works where the choral work was written in extreme times of plague which – if you think about it – is very relevant in these troubled times. That too had to be cancelled due to the second lockdown. He currently spends his time listening to new music, purchasing scores, marking them, and preparing for the time when everything opens back up again.
But apart from being a conductor, he is also a musicologist and historian; he does a lot of research on the Portuguese Creole carols and songs of Ceylon, for which he received the prestigious fellowship at the Fundação Oriente in Lisbon. He has also researched and performed the Sinhalese liturgy of the Church of Ceylon, as well as choral arrangements by Devar Surya Sena and Rev. Marcelline Jayakody, which he has presented at local and international forums. “I spend most of my time working on these research projects,” he commented.
