For any of you out there in blogland who happen find yourselves in central California this weekend, come on over to Stockton and experience the Ninth Annual Festival of Lessons & Carols at St John's Church. Your soul will thank you.
For those of you who are aficionados of the genre, we do it "Sewanee style"--that is, beginning very much in Advent (with the Palestrina Matins responsory "I Look from Afar") and then sliding in to full-out Christmas by the end (with "Once in Royal David's City").
The choir is serving up an incredibly rich fare, with nothing written before 1960!:
Adam Lay Ybounden (Matthew Larkin)
What Sweeter Music (John Rutter)
What Cheer! (William Walton)
God Is With Us (John Tavener)
I Wonder as I Wander (arr. Rutter)
There Is No Rose (Robert H. Young)
Corpus Christi Carol* (Trond Kverno)
Lux Aurumque (Eric Whitacre)
In Time of Softest Snow (John Carter)
Silent Night (arr. Mark David Johnson)
While All Things Were in Quiet Silence (Ned Rorem)
*my personal favorite--you must check it out!
It's at 6:00 PM. For directions see the St John's website.
Since I sleep with the choir director, I'm obligated to say that it's the best L&C west of the Continental Divide. But even if I weren't obligated, it would still be true!
Ditto to everything above....except the part about living with the choir director...we altar guild ladies got a preview this morning while we were dusting and the choir was practicing. They were raising the roof of the church! It will be awesome.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful service. Thank you for offering it.
ReplyDeleteYour choir can sing.