Home For The Holidays at the Mondavi
A
Review by Ken Kiunke
Staff Writer
We always enjoy the Christmas season and the
chance to experience candlelight processions, living Christmas
trees, choirs and orchestras performing the great music of the
yuletide. This year we had the opportunity to see a first class
professional symphony orchestra and the Sacramento area's leading
choral group at the beautiful Mondavi Center for the Performing
Arts. It was a wonderful evening we won't ever forget, and a very
special way to greet the season. Conductor Donald Kendrick led the
53 piece orchestra and 151 member chorus in an evening of musical
favorites, along with some lesser known pieces, celebrating
Christmas, the nativity, and the holiday season.
Courtesy Photo, at the Mondavi
Kendrick is the
founding conductor (in 1996) of the Sacramento Choral Society and
Orchestra, and he is also Director of Choral Activities at
California State University Sacramento, and Director of Music at
Sacred Heart Church in Sacramento. The Christmas concerts at the
Mondavi Center at U.C Davis are an annual event for the Sacramento
Choral Society & Orchestra and not to be missed if you love a
wonderful Christmas show.
This year's concerts were on the
weekend of December 11th and 12th. Kendrick not only directed the
orchestra and choral group, but acted as host, filling in
information about the music being performed, including composers,
eras, and interesting back stories. (Did you know "Sleigh Ride" was
written in the heat of the July summer in 1946, and first recorded
by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops?) Kendrick was warm and
engaging throughout, and with a good sense of humor as well.
Courtesy Photo: Don Kendrick, Conductor
The concert opened with a fourteenth
century work from Finland, titled "Personent Hodie", sung as
the candlelight procession lined the aisles of the theater. I was
lucky enough to be seated near an aisle, so I could hear the
individual voices of some of the sopranos and altos while they
blended beautifully with the rest of the choral group and the
orchestra. The piece is sung in Latin, but the program provides
translations for the non English songs. The first half of the show
continued with some familiar and some not so familiar pieces, such
as the "Donkey Carol" and "The Colors Of Christmas", and two pieces
by well known movie composer John Williams - "Somewhere In Memory"
and "Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas", both from the Home Alone
movies - which bring his familiar style of dramatic orchestrations,
but full of the joy of the season. Old favorites "Winter
Wonderland" and "Away In A Manger" were brought to beautiful life
in their arrangements from Barlow Bradford.
Photo: Full Chorus, courtesy
Other highlights of the second half
were two quieter pieces. "Gloria", also in Latin and beautifully
sung and per-formed, allowed the individual sections of the
orchestra to carry the melody, switching from the woodwinds to the
strings and brass sections. "Still Still Still" featured Concert
Master Cindy Lee's exquisite violin playing. And a slightly
re-written "Home For the Holidays" found Placerville, Vacaville,
and Sacramento subbing for Tennessee and Pennsylvania, and "from
Lake Tahoe to the Pacific, gee, the traffic is horrific" to add a
little fun.
A stunning "Silent Night" arrangement
from Barlow Bradford featured the orchestra playing a moving
counter melody to the chorus. After that beautiful piece, the
audience was sent home home with a rousing "We Wish You A Merry
Christmas", and the crowd responded with a standing ovation for
Kendrick and the musicians.
The Sacramento Choral Society &
Orchestra will next perform on April 14, 2012 with "English
Grandeur"; and June 2 at the Fremont Presbyterian Church in
Sacramento, which features one of the largest pipe organs in the
Western U.S. For more information on these
upcoming shows and the Sacramento Choral Society, visit
www.SacramentoChoral.com
All Photos by Ronnie Johnson – (with permission.)
The Sacramento Choral Society &
Orchestra, A Nationally Unique Arts Organization with Donald
Kendrick, Conductor airs Wed, Dec 21, 7pm on KVIE, Channel 6
Viewfinder Series, a PBS Documentary Broadcast.. Among the 12,000
Community Choruses in the United States, the SCSO is the only large
chorus of it kind to have a collective bargaining agreement with
its own professional symphony orchestra.
REBROADCAST
12/22 - 11:30 p.m.
12/23 – 1:30 a.m. & 4 p.m.
12/25 - 2:30 a.m. & 6 p.m.
12/27 – 5:30 a.m.
KVIE2 (for Comcast customers, Channel 7)
12/22 – 7:30 p.m.
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