Cantabile Chorale

The Seasons of Christmas

by Sanford Dole, Artistic Director

Fall has arrived, and the Cantabile Chorale is hard at work preparing for our December concert set, The Seasons of Christmas. As our opening program this year we’re presenting a full-on Christmas concert, and it’s going to knock your socks off!

The program is the culmination of years of planning on my part. I’ve sung in many candlelight-style Christmas concerts since...well, virtually every year since I was a small child. And I’ve often thought about what such a concert would be like if I were the one planning it. Running parallel with those musings, I’ve also thought of what would be on a Christmas recording if I could make one. So, as the years have passed, singing these concerts and listening to countless Christmas CDs, I’ve been storing up my favorites in a mental file.

I have my Renaissance favorites and then all of my 20th-century favorites. Rather than just divide the program into an early music half and a contemporary half, I felt it made more sense to group the pieces by their texts. The Seasons of Christmas, therefore, tells the familiar story of Christ’s birth in six stages. I’ve named the two for the season of Advent “The Angel Gabriel” and “In Praise of Mary.” From there, we move on to Christmas with “A Boy is Born,” “The Shepherds” and “In the Stable” and finally to Epiphany with “The Kings.”

Each of those six sets consists of three or four pieces mixing Renaissance composers with modern composers, and it will be interesting to hear how the old music informs the new, and vice versa. Along the way you’ll hear Josquin Desprez next to Englishman Herbert Howells, Spanish Renaissance master Francisco Guerrero with Canadian Healey Willan, and Slovene Jacob Handl followed by American Alice Parker. You’ll also hear delightful works from Catalonia, Norway, and Poland, as well as an original by yours truly. The bookends that begin and end the concert are both lively, 21st-century works interpreting medieval carols.

What’s more, we’ll record this program as a CD to be released next year. With our renewed focus on growth, we take this exciting step of making our first commercial recording to achieve greater community presence and recognition.

It’s a new era for us, and I’m sure you’ll want to be a part of it. So make plans now to attend one of our concerts on December 10, 11 or 12. If you can arrive a half-hour early, you’ll hear me talk a bit more about how I put this program together. And during intermission you can place your advance order for our CD of the show.

I look forward to seeing all of you in your Christmas finery. Cheers!

Cantabile Choral Guild
953 Industrial Avenue, Suite 122, Palo Alto CA 94303
650.424.1410 info@cantabile.org