Festival of Carols
Friday, November 30, 7:30 PM and
Saturday, December 1, 3:00 PM
St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church
With the support of harp and oboe, the first half of the program will consist of a mix of new carols and arrangements of familiar carols by Americans such as Dale Warland and the late Daniel Pinkham. The second half will feature the Three Nativity Carols by Minnesotan Stephen Paulus and (with piano) Californian Kirke Mechem’s Seven Joys of Christmas, a medley of a small host of familiar carols.
For any regulars who may have considered our recent Festival programs a bit on the esoteric side, this season we offer you nothing but carols, carols, and more carols, with virtually everything sung in English. Of course, I am not speaking of Mall Music, but the program does include a considerable diversity of beautiful arrangements of traditional carols, as well as new musical reactions to familiar texts. All the composers and arrangers are American, all but Daniel Pinkham alive and active; their source material, however, comes from England, France, Germany, Spain, and in one instance, Japan.
From one standpoint the repertory might suggest a meeting of the Twin City with the Twin Cities, since the work of Stephen Paulus appears with great frequency. A prominent Minneapolis-based composer, many of his choral works were written especially for the Dale Warland Singers, a group that for many years was admired as one of the best professional choral ensembles in the country, with numerous commissions and recordings to their credit.
Prolific Daniel Pinkham wrote primarily for chorus and the organ from his positions at the New England Conservatory of Music and King’s Chapel in Boston, while Kirke Mechem, a Californian long connected with Stanford University, has not only written much for chorus among his 250 published works, but also extensively for the opera stage. I should mention that the final movement of his “Sequence of Carols” becomes a grand finale, with snatches from carols used earlier in the cycle, as well as bits of other familiar melodies that suddenly appear without warning.
You might recognize Steven Rickards as the countertenor from Butler University in Indianapolis who appeared so memorably in our 2006 performance of Handel’s Jephtha. Bradley Ellingboe serves on the faculty of the University or New Mexico, Michael Fink has retired from the faculty of University of Texas at San Antonio and Roger Folstrom likewise from the faculty the University of Maryland at College Park.
We hope that you will find the work of all these gentlemen as diverse and colorful as their backgrounds.
Program
Michael Fink |
O come, Emmanuel |
Michael Fink |
What sweeter music can we bring |
Steven Rickards |
Angels Did Sing |
Stephen Paulus, arr. |
How far is it to Bethlehem? |
Bradley Ellingboe, arr. |
The Child of Mary |
Roger Folstrom, arr. |
A la nanita nana |
Stephen Paulus, arr. |
O little town of Bethlehem |
Stephen Paulus, arr. |
We three kings of Orient are |
Dale Warland, arr. |
Tomorrow shall be my dancing day traditional English words and melody |
Daniel Pinkham |
Come, love we God! |
intermission
Stephen Paulus |
Three Nativity Carols |
Kirke Mechem, arr. |
Seven Joys of Christmas, opus 25b |
Bill Osborne