A Child’s Christmas
Saturday, December 13th
1pm
What could be more fun than sharing the music of the holiday season with the youngsters in your family? Join NCS and our special guests for an hour of Christmas carols and sing-alongs.
Our annual CHILD’S CHRISTMAS concert is
especially designed for the young and their adult companions, and takes place at the McAninch Arts Center at College of DuPage. The
program will include popular holiday selections including
Jingle
Bells,
Rise Up Shepherd,
Lo How a Rose,
What Child is this?,
Silent
Night and other traditional favorites. We will also be presenting musical selections by Alice
Parker, John Rutter and Lee Kesselman, accompanied by instrumentalists Sherry Kujala, flute, and
William Buhr, piano.
As always, Santa will join us on stage and in the lobby following
the performance. One of our most popular concerts of the year—get your
tickets early!
Family Christmas Album 27: All Carols
Sunday, December 14th
4pm
What would Christmas be without carols? NCS brings you our annual celebration of popular traditional carols from Spain, England, Estonia, America and the African-American Spiritual tradition. There will be arrangements by Luboff, Warland, Rutter and Vaughan Williams, a new arrangement of What Child Is This? for flute and chorus by our Music Director Lee Kesselman, and an arrangement of the Coventry Carol by Glen Ellyn resident and NCS member Paul Sirvatka. These songs will touch your ears and your heart.
The concert will feature guest artist flautist Sherry Kujala, and our long-time accompanist William Buhr will accompany from the keyboard.
Program
I
Gaudete (from Piae Cantiones, 1582) — arr. Hawley Ades
Of the Father’s Love
Begotten (13th C. plainsong) — arr. Dale Warland
II From Spain
Riu, riu, chiu (16th C. Spain) — arr. Ben Allaway
Nightingale Carol (17th C. Catalan) — arr. E. A. Hovdesven
Dansaron (16th C. Spain) — arr. Ben Allaway
III From the British Isles
Coventry Carol (15th C.) — arr. Paul Sirvatka
Child in a Manger
(Celtic) — arr. John Rutter
Wexford Carol (Irish) — arr. Dale Warland
In the Bleak Mid-Winter — Gustav Holst arr. Lee R. Kesselman
What Child is This? (English, before 1642) — arr. Lee R.
Kesselman
Wassail Song (North of England) — arr. Ralph Vaughan Williams
IV Spirituals
Rise Up Shepherd and Follow — arr. Larry Farrow
Glory, glory, glory to the Newborn King — arr. Moses Hogan
INTERMISSION
V Bells
Ule Lume Lagedale
(Estonia) — arr. Ken Berg
Carol of the Bells — arr. Kirby Shaw
Jingle, Bells — J. Pierpont (1822-1893) arr. David Willcocks
VI
Lo, How a Rose / The Rose — Michael Praetorius/Amanda McBroom arr. Craig Hella Johnson
Still, Still, Still (Austria) — arr. Norman Luboff
Good King Wenceslaus (from Piae Cantiones, 1582) — arr. David Willcocks
VII From the Hills of America
Hush, My Babe (Appalachia) — arr. Wayland Rogers
I Wonder as I Wander
(Appalachia) — arr. John Jacob Niles & Lewis Henry Horton
Sunny Bank (Virginia) — arr. Mack Wilberg
We Wish You A Merry Christmas (England) — arr. Paul Johnson
Encores
Light One Candle — Peter Yarrow arr. Robert DeCormier
Silent Night
Guest Artist Sherry Kujala
NCS is pleased to welcome back to our stage guest artist Sherry Kujala.
Although Sherry has played the flute since she was a child growing up
in Waco, Texas, these days she maintains a career that balances her
interests in flute performance, arts administration and publishing. For
many years Sherry was associated with the school of music at Baylor
University where she was a longtime student of Helen Ann Shanley. She began her studies with Professor
Shanley in the eighth grade, and continued through her college years at
Baylor.
Sherry completed her master of music in flute performance at
Northwestern University (Evanston, Illinois) in 1985, and at the time
planned on pursuing a doctorate, further solidifying her qualifications
for college professorships. Her career took a slight turn when upon
graduation from Northwestern, she won a spot in the Civic Orchestra of
Chicago (the training orchestra of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra), and
at the same time, took a position on the staff of the Chicago Symphony
in the Development Department. After three years in that position,
Sherry returned to school, but instead of following her previous plans
to pursue a doctorate in music, she entered the Kellogg Graduate School
of Management at Northwestern.
A career associated with symphony
orchestras, whether playing in them or participating in the
behind-the-scenes operations of orchestras, became Sherry’s natural
choice for career placement. She had enjoyed a lifelong passion for
orchestras from a very young age when her mother was the executive
assistant to the music director of a regional orchestra in Texas. Her
father’s work as a high school band director introduced her to the
numerous operations challenges of keeping a large ensemble running and
afloat. It was perhaps the confluence of these numerous imprints
from her childhood that drives her to the passionate belief that the
various operations functions are as important to the final results of a
concert as the proper interpretation of a Haydn symphony.
In
addition to performing in the flute sections of a number of orchestras
throughout the Midwest, Sherry has appeared as a soloist in
performances of concertos and solos by Carl Nielsen, Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart (Concerto in G Major, Concerto in D Major, and the Concerto for
Flute and Harp), Antonio Vivaldi (concertos for both flute and
piccolo), Carl Reinecke, and Poem by Charles T. Griffes.
Sherry was on the substitute list of the flute section of the Chicago
Symphony for 12 years, and is pleased to have had a few opportunities
each of those years to perform and record with the orchestra on both
flute and piccolo. Sherry is married to Walfrid Kujala, former
principal piccoloist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and currently
professor of flute at Northwestern University. Together they own and
operate a small publishing firm devoted to Walfrid’s pedagogical
materials for flute study and orchestra audition preparation, as well
as a few solo works commissioned by noted composers.
