A cast of hundreds performs Mahler 8th

It’s a Wednesday evening chorus rehearsal and conductor Norman Scribner, longtime artistic director of Washington’s Choral Arts Society, is reaching for a note.Or at least rearranging it.”No, that’s not it,” he says, and tells two men, who stand one behind the other, to change places. “You have to have the right kind of blend.”

A couple of permutations later, the note emerges pure and clean, just what Mr. Scribner was reaching for.

Some ear. What makes it more intriguing is the fact that this chorus before him is not just his own, but a melodic fusion of singers from Washington’s four largest choruses — the Choral Arts Society, the Washington Chorus, the Master Chorale of Washington and the Cathedral Choral Society — that will come together for a once-in-a-blue-moon event.

It’s the choruses’ presentation, along with the Children’s Chorus of Washington, the National Symphony Orchestra and eight soloists under Leonard Slatkin — tonight, tomorrow and Saturday at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall — of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, composed for an instrumental and vocal assemblage so large that it has been dubbed the “Symphony of a Thousand.”

And in the weeks leading up to this weekend’s choral spree, the choruses’ directors — Mr. Scribner, Robert Shafer of the Washington Chorus, Donald McCullough of the Master Chorale, J. Reilly Lewis of the Cathedral Choral Society and Joan Gregoryk of the Children’s Chorus — have worked in concert, so to speak, to prepare the singers, who will number more than 350.

Nuts and bolts sublime

What’s the occasion? The performance of the epic work celebrates the NSO’s 75th anniversary and marks the close of its subscription season. But it’s also the centerpiece of a five-day gathering of some 600 choristers and chorus managers from all over the United States and Canada, here for the 29th annual conference of Chorus America, an association of choral professionals.

Their conference, hosted by the Washington Chorus and marked by choral concerts at several Washington venues, began yesterday with a concert by the U.S. Army Chorus and Washington Bach Consort at St. Matthew’s Cathedral. It will culminate on Sunday in a free gala performance at the Music Center at Strathmore, where more than 300 singers and musicians will present music dating from the Revolutionary War to the present.

So it’s no wonder Washington is spending its choral capital and then some this weekend. Chorus America, which counts more than 1,600 choruses, individuals and businesses in its membership, provides help to choruses nationwide in marketing, administration, board development and fundraising, as well as in singing and conducting techniques.

“We’re all about the nuts and bolts of having a chorus,” says Ann Meier Baker, the group’s president and CEO.

In other words, they talk so the choristers can sing.

Sing they do. A Chorus America study several years ago found more than 250,000 choruses in operation across the country. Mrs. Baker estimates that nearly 28.5 million adults and children are regularly involved in some sort of chorus.

“It’s a really resilient art form,” she says.

A capital idea

Choruses are particularly popular in the nation’s capital, where a cornucopia of choral organizations — everything from great symphonic choruses to church and community choirs to smaller-scaled groups like the Woodley Ensemble or the Thomas Circle Singers — manages to offer something for just about everyone, from the casual shower singer to the most serious chanteuse.

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