We have snow, we have gifts, friends, family and food coming out our ears. What more is left to mark the season? For many, it's the Anchorage Concert Chorus' annual Family Holiday Pops Concert. It is the festive end to all the shopping, wrapping, decorating and cooking, and the start to the real essence of this time of the year - family, friends, good fellowship and songs that fill our hearts.
Sunday's performance at the Atwood Concert Hall delivered everything it promises each year. Although the musical atmosphere was different this time -- sharper, more contemporary -- it was lovely to listen to with someone you care about by your side. This year the Family Holiday Pops concert fell on both the winter solstice and the first night of Hanukkah, giving us more reason to celebrate the sun's return to these winter-darkened months with joyful sights and sounds.
One of the more haunting images in the concert was that of a group of singers filing silently down the orchestra aisles, each holding a candle to ward off the dark. They began with the word "Alleluia," sung gently and simply. Soon golden light bathed the chorus members onstage as they echoed back this simple, powerful word of joy.
That sound became a jubilant shout in the lively "O Come Ye for Christmas," a contemporary, upbeat melody that asked us to "tell the world to rejoice" that Christ is born. This shift from solemn to lively, meditative to joyful shaped the concert. And unique musical arrangements gave even the most die-hard Holiday Pops fan something to wonder at.
Mack Wilberg's arrangement of "The First Nowell" and Chip Davis and Calvin Custer's arrangement of "Silent Night" were stunning in their simplicity and emotional depths. Men's voices filled the heart with the slow, solemn opening notes of "The First Nowell." The women joined in later, with the orchestral sounds of horns at their backs to support the quiet this lovely music evoked in the theater.
"Silent Night" was a long drawn-out breath, seemingly on a single note, as the chorus stayed in a tight musical range. Moments of musical suspension caught and released that breath as the song reached its peaceful end.
On the opposite musical side were the wacky "Variations on Jingle Bells" by John Pierpont and the darkly mysterious "Star of Bethlehem" by John Williams. "Chanukkah Suite," arranged by Jeff Tyzik, wove the music of the Middle East into this homage to the Jewish Festival of Lights. The lilt of a flute floating above the dark theater threaded an ancient sound through Bill Douglas's contemporary "Irish Lullaby." And that flute turned happy in "See Amid the Winter's Snow," an English melody filled with sweet voices and the shimmer of chimes at the end.
Of course, no Holiday Pops concert would be complete without the sing-along. Sunday afternoon we listened to sleigh bells and chased frosty showmen in a winter wonderland. And isn't it nice to then go inside and snuggle by the fire, knowing that "there's no place like home for the holidays."
Anne Herman holds a master's degree in dance and has been a consultant for the National Endowment for the Arts.
By ANNE HERMAN
Daily News correspondent