On Jan. 31 and Feb. 1, Cave Concert, a nonprofit concert project, will hold four concerts of classical and liturgical choral music underground in Vallecito’s Moaning Caverns, California’s largest natural cave. The concert's director, Tristann Dias, is collaborating on this year's showcase with Nate Widelitz, a Dublin, CA-based choral director and tenor.
To reach their seats, audiences must descend 165 feet from the cave entrance to the performance floor inside the cavern’s main chamber. The 50-minute set will consist of resonant music meant to evoke a darker mood, including “Bogoróditse Djévo” (Rejoice, Virgin) by Sergei Rachmaninoff, “Os Justi” (The mouth of the righteous) by Anton Bruckner, “Versa est in Luctum” (My harp is turned to mourning) by Alonso Lobo, “Selig sind die Toten” (Blessed are the dead) by Heinrich Schütz, and “In Paradisum” by Galina Grigorjeva.
Despite the religious content, Dias stressed that this will be a secular performance. “All are welcome to join,” he said
“From attending past concerts, I know that the sound is incredible,” he said, revealing his reason for scheduling a concert in a cave. “Watching performances in this cave is a special experience.”
Dias and Widelitz plan to create ambience by placing beeswax candles behind performers. The candles burn to give a soft illumination and “contribute to creating a transcendent atmosphere in a sacred space,” Dias said.
Because the cave does not have uniform acoustics, Widelitz will have the singers stand together in small groups at times and sing in different directions. This will create acoustic effects unique to the space. Widelitz and the chorus, 14 singers chosen from the California Bach Society and Stockton Chorale, will visit the cave the day before the first concert to get a sense of what it’s like to sing there.
This professional version of the cave concert, which has been held for the past two years, developed out of Dias’s experience of Christmas carol concerts he attended at Moaning Caverns back when he was 11 and 12. They featured singers from a local high school.
“By the time I became an adult, those concerts had stopped,” he recalled. “Yet the experience of hearing music performed live in the cave was extremely significant for me as a young vocal artist.”
When he decided to recreate that experience with professional artists, he approached the owners of Moaning Caverns agreeably donated the space for the concerts. The caverns are open the rest of the year, if you want to visit and try a sound experiment yourself.
With limited tickets available, the concerts are once again sold out. Dias recommends buying tickets in the fall if you want to attend.” The underground music “has a magical, captivating quality,” Dias enthuses. “It feels like you are under the spell of the earth.”
For information about the Cave Concert, visit https://caveshowcase.org/.
