Here’s to the holidays! Oxford Civic Chorus invites you to celebrate the joy with its annual winter concert at 3 pm December 14 at David H. Nutt Auditorium.
The choir, with its fifty or so singers from North Mississippi and the L-O-U community, has been singing in the season with a winter concert for more than 25 years. This year’s program features two choral works to get you in the spirit, and solos by choir members Kristina Tullgren, Jim White, and Carley Wilemon.
In “A Winter Day,” with voices, piano, and cello, Canadian composer Sarah Quartel portrays the frozen starlit hour before dawn, the fun of sleighing and playing in the drifts, and the hush of evening snow.
Choir member Kevin Beach, a professor of astronomy and physics at the University of Mississippi, has been singing tenor with OCC for three years. “A Winter Day” is especially meaningful for him — he’s also from Canada and lived for six years in Kingston, Ontario, where it was first performed.
“It’s got a lot of snow, and it could be very beautiful deep in the winter,” Beach said. “The music is kind of nostalgic for me because I can really feel the ways in which the tonal quality of it pulls out these resonances with the kind of feeling you have in that sort of crystalline, snowy environment. It really feels evocative for me, someone who’s lived in the in the South for 10 years and hasn’t been back to my cold roots.”
After Quartel sets the mood with musical scenes of drifting snow, listeners will be treated to a selection of holiday tunes by Bob Chilcott in the spirit of the season.
Chilcott’s “On Christmas Night” is an arrangement of original settings of traditional carols that tell the Christmas story, from the fall of Adam to the birth of Jesus, in a range of styles and moods. The accompaniment includes cello, flute, oboe, keyboard, and piano.
“I’ve really loved focusing on these on these two big pieces for December,” Beach said. “Rehearsals this season have been amazing.”
Oxford Civic Chorus relies on donations to help purchase music, hire musicians, offer scholarships, defray administrative costs, provide benefit concerts for other nonprofits, and continue to offer free performances. Your donation at the concert or online at oxfordcivicchorus.org is greatly appreciated.
This concert is funded in part by a grant from the Mississippi Arts Commission, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. The choir also received a grant from Lafayette Oxford Foundation for Tomorrow to purchase music.
Oxford Civic Chorus, a 501(c)(3), has been inspiring singers, enriching community and expanding musical horizons since 1998. The choir gathers for weekly rehearsals, performs two concerts a year, and is available to sing at local events. New members are always welcome. Join, donate or learn more at oxfordcivicchorus.org and facebook.com/OxfordCivicChorus.
