Take in some beautiful Christmas music at the Parksville and District Community Choir’s annual Christmas Concert, Songs of the Season.
The show will highlight two major classical works: Gounod’s St. Cecilia Mass and a Bach Christmas Cantata, For Us a Child is Born. The program also includes a wide selection of shorter Christmas choral works that will appeal to everyone.
The musical variety in the St. Cecilia Mass is wonderful, especially in the lyric middle section’s rich solos for tenor, bass, and soprano. With a return to the first section, the Gloria ends with voices blazing.
The choir is delighted to bring back three talented and experienced professional singers for this concert. Soprano Andrea Sicotte Rodall performs with many Island choirs and has sung with the Vancouver Island Opera and the Pacific Opera Victoria Chorus. This December she will be a featured soloist with the Malaspina Choir performance of the Messiah in Nanaimo. Tenor John Doughty, of Victoria, performs as a soloist for a number of musical organizations in the Victoria area. He also sings with the Hexaphone Vocal Ensemble, an a cappella sextet. Baritone Paul Boughen, also of Victoria, is equally at home on the concert stage, having appeared with local orchestras and choirs in oratorio and concert arias. He is a founding member of the Hexaphone Vocal Ensemble.
Music director, Ann Barber, pianist Margaret Nelson and organist John Nelson add their special talents to bring a banquet of Songs of the Season which is at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 1, at Knox United Church in Parksville.
All tickets $15, are available at Mulberry Bush Bookstores and the door.
— Submitted by Kathy Larson