There are many things that make this time of the year special: good food, friends, winter sports, snow, more good food and lots of presents. But the sounds of the season can touch the heart most closely. Music -- vocal or instrumental -- is often what ties people and the season together.
The Alaska Chamber Singers gave a capacity audience at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church their gift of holiday music Friday night in a program titled "Make We Joy!" What a splendid setting for the solemn, joyous and often religious sounds of this concert. The church is large, almost devoid of decoration and built in the Southwest mission style. It was well-suited to the haunting, exciting sounds of unaccompanied voices.
Conductor David Hagen worked these voices like a master in a program that was contemporary and sophisticated. And the Chamber Singers responded well to his deft leadership. The concert began on a joyous note with "African Noel." The singers were spread across the altar and that shaped the sounds which became a shout of happiness at the end.
Their handling of "O Nata Lux" was well-edged, yet muted at times. The work, sung in Latin, was quite religious, a supplication to the Lord to grant us peace. There seemed to be more sound than words here, rising and falling and a bit harsh from time to time. But "Dormi, Jesu!" and "Infant Holy, Infant Tender" were as delicate as a mother's lullaby to her sleeping child
In contrast, altos and tenors traded swinging melodies in "He Smiles Within His Cradle" that got the audience and many of the performers swaying and nodding to its notes. And "Wexford Carol," sung by the women, had just a touch of an Irish lilt to carry it along sweetly.
Hagen described the group of American Shape Note Songs as a sort of "fa-la-la" take on some well-known, and not so well-known, seasonal works.
A smaller group of performers faced each other in a rectangle, as if singing for themselves and not the audience. The melodies, cadence and accenting were more Americana than proper European, but it was an interesting mix of songs.
Ironically one of the most beautiful works in the concert was for single voice and English horn.
The well-known "I Wonder As I Wander" began hauntingly as Merry Chadwick sketched the melody with a few notes. Chris Cooke's tenor was clear as the winter night air as he questioned why Jesus came to earth just to die.
The Alaska Chamber Singers finished their Christmas concert with a suite of "Secular Christmas Carols," many of which had unusual arrangements that made you sit up and listen and not just nod off to the familiar music. And the Singers' signature version of "Silent Night," stayed with the audience at it went out into the cold night.
Anne Herman holds a master's degree in dance and has been a consultant for the National Endowment for the Arts
By ANNE HERMAN