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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