We are still glowing after our wonderful holiday concert!
St Joseph’s Church in New Haven was filled to the rafters on December 4th with both people and music. Playing to a sold out audience of nearly 500 people (masks notwithstanding!), the Chorale delivered a masterfully curated selection of both classic and contemporary pieces widely touted as one of the its loveliest holiday repertoires in recent memory.
Light and peace were the themes threading through the captivating blend of traditional holiday music and contemporary classical choral music. Inspirational excerpts from Mozart’s Dominicus Mass and J. S. Bach’s Magnificat were combined with mesmerizing works including Luminous Night of the Soul by Norwegian composer Ola Gjeilo and Gloria in Excelsis by Canadian composer Eleanor Daley, as well as contemporary American works, including Alleluia by Elaine Hagenberg, O Magnum Mysterium by Mark Miller, Peace Flows into Me by Jake Runestad, and Sure on This Shining Night by Morten Lauridsen.
The diversity of this concert’s program belied its uplifting universality. Maestro Bolkovac explained the through-line this way: “The spiritual power in the exuberant music from the excerpts from Bach’s Magnificat and Mozart’s Mass in C (K. 66) goes beyond the theology of their texts. Their joyous music has the ability to engender positive energy through the masterful declamation and impeccable writing alone. Eleanor Daley’s Gloria and Elaine Hagenberg’s Alleluia both are high powered bursts. Jake Runestad’s Peace Flows into Me along with Mark Miller’s O Magnum Mysterium help to bring us to find our own inner calm amidst our lives that are often inundated with too many distractions and too much to do. Ola Gjeilo’s powerful work Luminous Night of the Soul, a setting of poetry by Charles Silvestri, musically describes Silvestri’s words of a divine power that is infused in music, poetry, and the visual arts.” The opening of Silvestri’s poem perhaps sums up the DNA of the concert:
Long before music was sung by a choir,
Long before silver was shaped in the fire,
Long before poets inspired the heart,
You were the Spirit of all that is art
Our guest vocal soloist, the ever-engaging mezzo soprano Rebecca Batista de Almeida, performed two stunning works in addition to those she sang with the Chorale: O Thou That Tellest, from Handel’s Messiah, and Melodia Sentimental, a lush, romantic piece by Heitor Villa-Lobos conducted by Rebecca’s husband Blake Hansen, Accompanist and Assistant Conductor for the Chorale. The piece proved to be an audience favorite, but it truly became a highlight of the concert when the pair’s young son wandered up to his mother as she was performing, then over to his father, climbing onto the conductor’s podium and gently taking his [nonconducting] hand. There were gasps and chuckles all around as Chorale and audience alike watched this very sweet scene play out, but both parents handled the situation with love, grace and aplomb, literally never skipping a beat.
After nearly 90 minutes of gorgeous, powerful and expressive music that inspired a standing ovation, an encore performance of Peace Flows Into Me brought the 2023 Holiday Concert to a gentle close. It will be remembered as one of our most successful performances. We are feeling blessed and grateful—for each other, for the music, and for you, our greater Chorale family.
