New Classic Singers continues its 26th concert season as a professional choral ensemble with Family Christmas Album 25, a joyous musical celebration of the holiday season, on Sunday, December 16, at the McAninch Arts Center at College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn.  The 4 p.m. concert will feature guest artist harpist Stephen Hartman.  Founder and Music Director Lee Kesselman will conduct. Long-time accompanist of the NCS, William Buhr, will accompany from the keyboard.

This year's Family Christmas Album features many hits from previous NCS holiday programs by Alice Parker, Victoria, Lauridsen, and Rutter, as well as John Muehleisen’s stunning and evocative suite, This Night, for chorus and harp.  The program will also include familiar carols and popular Christmas songs.

The Family Christmas Album has been a cornerstone of NCS seasons since the inaugural season of the professional choral ensemble in 1982. DuPage audiences have regularly flocked to these concerts for the finest in choral singing and repertoire. Members include solo vocalists, educators, and other fine singers from through the Chicago area. The ensemble is known for its imaginative programs and vocal excellence.

STEPHEN HARTMAN

Harpist Mr. Hartman is solo and principal harpist with the Elgin Symphony, has performed with such ensembles as the American Ballet Theater, Chicago Opera Theater, and as an extra harpist has played with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at home and on tour in New York, Japan, Switzerland and Germany.

In addition to Capriccio, his flute and harp duo, his harp duo, Tick Tock, has been featured at the Newberry Library, the Field Museum and the American Harp Society Convention in Columbus, Ohio. In 2000 they released their first CD, Carols of the Winter Solstice.

Hartman has recorded and toured with composer William Ferris to the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music at the Vatican in Rome, and has toured the Elgin Choral Union to Wales and England. His 1996 recording of Leo Sowerby's Concerto for Harp and Small Orchestra with the Monadnock Music Festival was the premiere CD for this concerto. He has recorded Christmas CDs with the Glen Ellyn Children's Chorus and the Milwaukee Children's Choir.

Hartman is a regular performer with New Classic Singers and appears on NCS' first CD, A Family Christmas Album.

Program

I

Personent Hodie — arr. Alice Parker (b. 1925)

O Magnum Mysterium — Thomas Luis de Victoria (1549-1611)

O Magnum Mysterium — Morten Lauridsen (b. 1943)

II

This Night — John Muehleisen (b. 1955)

with Stephen Hartman, harp

1. Invocation
2. The First Miracle
3. Christmas Hail

John Muehleisen’s celebratory choral cycle with harp, This Night, was commissioned and premiered by the Dale Warland Singers during their farewell season (2003-2004), when Muehleisen served as the group’s final composer-in-residence. The work sets three texts about the Nativity from the voluminous Carmina Gadelica, an anthology of ancient Celtic Christian texts gathered by English tax collector and amateur ethnographer Alexander Carmichael while he carried out his governmental duties in the Scottish Highlands.

“Invocation” describes the Nativity in mystical images of nature, of light piercing darkness, and of grief being replaced by joy, accompanied by allusions to the star of Bethlehem and the heavenly angelic host announcing the birth.

“The First Miracle” is a fanciful, apocryphal story of a miracle performed while Jesus was still a baby in his mother’s womb on the way to the census in Bethlehem. Again images of nature abound, as is common in much Celtic Christian literature, an artifact of the original pagan Celtic culture, but transformed through the lens of Christianity. A subplot of this brief parable portrays Joseph’s initial suspicions and confusion, and later realization of who it was that his betrothed was carrying. The music portrays this tale with dance-like innocence and as a small “scena” with alto and bass solos and the chorus as narrator.

The finale ratchets the tempo up one more notch in its portrayal of a visit by Celtic carolers to the house of one of their neighbors on the “eve of the Great Nativity,” during which the revelers would sing and dance within the house wishing the occupants good health and good fortune while singing praises to “the King” whose birthday they were about to celebrate. Themes and images from the opening movement are echoed in the text and music, bringing the cycle full circle. — John Muehleisen (November 2005)

III

Candlelight Carol — John Rutter (b. 1945)

Friendly Beasts — arr. Lee R. Kesselman

Go Tell it On the Mountain — arr. James Furman

INTERMISSION

IV

Deck the Halls — arr. Shaw-Parker

Hallelu — Stephen Paulus (b. 1949)

O Tannenbaum — arr. Shaw-Parker

Still, Still, Still — arr. David Brunner

Do You Hear What I Hear? — arr. Harry Simeone

V

PEACE (1984) — David Schiff (b. 1945)

Sherry Kujala, flute
William Buhr, organ

VI

Winter Wonderland — Felix Bernard, arr. Greg Jasperse

We Need A Little Christmas — Jerry Herman, arr. Jerry Rubino

I’ll be Home for Christmas — Kim Gannon & Walter Kent, arr. Kevin Robison

It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year — Eddie Pola & George Wyle, arr. Jerry Rubino