The holidays are upon us!

Entering this Holiday Season, many of us are still reeling from the effects of COVID 19. Having been affected ourselves as an organization, it’s always in the back of our minds. We are approaching our 16th season, however, with great optimism and excitement!
 
At our Holiday concert on December 3, we will reprise some selections from our past concerts and, per our wont, present some new arrangements of Christmas standards and pieces that are new to us and our audiences. We will perform William Grant Still’s evocative “Christmas in the Western World,’ and we will recognize the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ralph Vaughan Williams with an arrangement of his original setting of his “Sussex Carol.”  I am including some arrangements of my own, as well as my new setting of the “Hail Mary.”
 
In the spring, we will present the “concert that didn’t happen” – our Spring 2022 concert, Gone Too Soon. I assembled a program that is fun, interesting, and varied. Besides the familiar composers who passed at the height of their creative powers i.e. Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Purcell, I’m including the works of Joplin, Gershwin, Steve Goodman, and John Lennon. The wonderful Dutch soprano, Josefien Stoppelenburg, has agreed to join us for this program, as she had planned last spring. Before we had to pull the plug the day before the performance, we had some amazing rehearsals, having had the chance to run the entire show. We know it will be a very special event and one that should not be missed.
 
I do hope you are able to attend one or both of these events. You will not be disappointed.
 
For those of you who purchased tickets for last spring’s concert, and you haven’t done so already, you can deem your purchases as donations; request refunds; or apply them as credit toward one our concerts.

---