10:37 AM CDT on Thursday, June 8, 2006

By SCOTT CANTRELL / The Dallas Morning News

The Dallas Symphony Chorus is going south next week – way south.

MONA REEDER/DMN

Members of the Dallas Symphony Chorus rehearse in preparation for a tour of South America that leaves Tuesday.

On its fourth international tour, the group leaves Tuesday for South America, with performances in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Montevideo, Uruguay; and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Led by director David R. Davidson, with a different orchestra in each city, the chorus will perform the Brahms German Requiem.

But first there's a local preview of the Brahms, in a Friday evening performance with the Dallas Chamber Orchestra and soloists Cynthia Major and Weston Hurt in the recently completed sanctuary of First United Methodist Church Richardson.

Only 96 of the 240 singers on the chorus roster are booked for the tour, but that's enough for the Brahms. About 40 non-singers – spouses, partners and friends – are going along for the trip, which includes organized sightseeing in each city.

The tour costs about $3,200 per singer, Mr. Davidson says. But, thanks to gifts and accrued funds, each singer is paying about $1,700 for the 10-day trip.

A handful of orchestras work with professional choruses, but the Dallas Symphony Chorus is a volunteer group. Its members have day jobs as doctors, nurses, lawyers, church musicians, secretaries and just about any other occupation you can imagine. They come from all over the Dallas-Fort Worth area and as far afield as Waxahachie and Greenville.

While the DSO pays salaries for Mr. Davidson, an administrative assistant, a librarian and an accompanist and helps with advertising, the chorus is on its own for tours apart from the orchestra.

And there's a cost in time as well as money. "The chorus members give about 350 hours of rehearsal and performance time a year," Mr. Davidson says. "It's a pretty significant commitment."

The chorus typically performs with the DSO in three classical programs each season, plus 11 Christmas concerts. Rehearsals are held Monday evenings, August through June. Extra sectional ones sometimes are scheduled for particularly difficult works such as the Leos Janácek Glaglolitic Mass, which the chorus performed in January.

Locally, in addition to its DSO dates, the chorus usually gives one concert on its own each season.

Singers are expected to commit for the whole season, although each singer is excused from two of the 11 Christmas concerts. With 200 seats in the choral terrace of the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, the chorus has about a 40-singer margin of error for sickness and work conflicts.

On this tour, the chorus will perform with La Filarmónica in Buenos Aires, Orquestra Filarmónica in Montevideo and Orquestra Petrobrás Sinfônica in Rio.

"We do it for the exposure, getting the Dallas Symphony Chorus and Dallas Symphony name out there," Mr. Davidson says. "It's also a great opportunity to see some new places, and it's an esprit de corps thing for the chorus itself.

"It's also for the international interaction with people. I happen to believe that we wouldn't have a lot of the world problems if we dealt more person-to-person rather than government-to-government."

Mr. Davidson submitted several alternative programs for the tour, and the South American presenters picked the Brahms.

The chorus was founded in 1977 at the request of Eduardo Mata, then the orchestra's music director.

"They'd been using university choruses and church choirs," Mr. Davidson says. "Mata wanted a program that was identified with the Dallas Symphony." Mr. Davidson, who's also director of music at Highland Park United Methodist Church, has directed the chorus since 1993.

The South American tour follows trips to Europe (1985 and 2003) and Israel (1996). The chorus also has performed at New York's Carnegie Hall, with the DSO (most recently in April 2005 in Carl Orff's Carmina Burana) and the Opera Orchestra of New York.

E-mail scantrell@dallasnews.com

The Dallas Symphony Chorus and Dallas Chamber Orchestra perform at 7:30 p.m. Friday at First United Methodist Church Richardson, 503 N. Central Expressway. $15. 214-321-1411.