Review | Choral Christmas Feasting

Santa Barbara Choral Society and Quire of Voyces Unveil Voices and Diverse Christmas Vision in a Busy Weekend

The Santa Barbara Choral Society's "Hallelujah Project 10" concert, December 15, 2024 | Photo: Max Hennard

Choral music geeks and aficionados — as well as dabblers — got a blissful earful of inspiration last weekend, when the season’s choral concert greetings included both the Santa Barbara Choral Society’s (SBCS) Hallelujah Project and the Quire of Voyces’ Mysteries of Christmas. Both events are, by now, solidly implanted in the Christmas season calendar locally — the Project celebrating its 10th anniversary and the Quire its 31st — and with defining differences between the two.

Most saliently, the long JoAnne Wasserman–directed Choral Society’s intentional variety show concept, including an orchestrated reading of “The Night Before Christmas” (actor Meredith Baxter doing the reading-in-the-rocker duties this year), comes equipped with a scaled-down orchestra. By contrast, the a cappella Quire of Voyces, founded by intrepid director Nathan Kreitzer, is inherently instrument-free — focused on the primal and pure vocal instrument.

Heard in the compacted space of a weekend, and in two enlightening venues — the Lobero Theatre and the old worldly-esque St. Anthony’s Chapel — the concerts added up to a double dose of seasonal inspiration. For this observer and many others, the twofer succeeded as a holiday mood-stoker, while also showcasing the innate diversity of what qualifies as Christmas music.

JoAnne Wasserman leads the Santa Barbara Choral Society’s “Hallelujah Project 10” concert, December 15, 2024 | Photo: Max Hennard

Collectively, the weekend’s playlist ranged from the 15th-century German song “There Stood in Heaven a Linden Tree” (the Quire’s reading of an arrangement by Susan LaBarr, b. 1981) through a bite-size portion of Handel’s Messiah, sung by the Choral Society in the in-house crowd-choir. We also got fresh twists on the standard Christmas Carol jukebox — the stuff of SBCS’s Mark Wilberg–arranged “Joy to the World” and their Randol Alan Bass–arranged closer “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and Quire’s traditional finale of “Silent Night,” via Malcolm Sargent’s tranquil arrangement.

A decade ago, The Hallelujah Project emerged on the season scene as a reasonable and resourceful answer to the ongoing question of how to deal with a Christmas-timed program, with all of its potential variety, versus just another Messiah on the calendar. The result was a judicious sampler plate of “serious” and festive shorter pieces, a pinch of Hanukkah music, the inclusion of younger singers in the mix, and a family-centric reading of “’Twas the Night Before Christmas” — set to Philip Lane’s orchestral backing — with rotating celebrities in the reading rocker and a Santa visitation in the house.

Ten years into the successful venture, the program ranged from acclaimed choral composer John Rutter’s glorious Gloria segueing into an appearance by the youth choir group SING! (directed by Erin McKibben), to such tunes as John Williams’s “Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas” (from the film Home Alone) and the Catalan carol “Esta Noche,” fancified by Rutter’s arrangement.

For Sunday afternoon’s Quire encounter, I wended my way back to the invitingly secluded St. Anthony’s Chapel — now part of a property, recently bought by new owners, whose future is uncertain. Let’s hope the Quire’s long-standing residency can remain intact: the sumptuous and hypnotic ensemble sound they produce benefits from the resonant expanse, not to mention the historical ripples, of the performance container.

As Kreitzer told me before the concert, this Mysteries of Christmas program was different from past models — often mixing renaissance with contemporary music, and stopovers in olde-ish British choral zones — in that the program leaned heavily on “Christmas music.” What a concept. Of course, what that meant in Quire terms was a set of inventively restaged and rearranged music by living composers sculpting from often early musical clay.

To open, composer-in-residence Stephen Dombek showed his inspired touch with “Hodie” — a Christmas chant used by Pergolesi and many another composer over the centuries — and the Polish carol “Infant Holy, Infant Lowly” (“W żłobie leży”). From the outset, the group’s mastery was evident and established a sense of musical place we wanted to be. Among the highlights of the one long set of music were Kenneth Leighton’s score for “Lulla, lulla, Thou Little Tiny Child,” with its luminous and lovely solo by soprano Nichole Dechaine.

From my perspective, the star of the program among composer/arrangers was Matthew Culloton, from the Minnesotan motherlode of choral fortitude, inked with famed choral director Dale Warland. Culloton’s inventive reworking handiwork was on display on intelligent treatments of the magnificent (and underrated) German carol “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming,” with a melody floating semi-freely atop sustained choral clouds of sound.

Even more impressive is Culloton’s revitalized vision of the classic “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” rhythmically subdivided and almost contrapuntally Cubist in design, and delivered with expected polish and, well, mystery, by Kreitzer’s Quire. It was an inspiration to head, soul and heart, an ideal hopeful toast to the Christmas spirit.

And to all a good and, SpaceX permitting, silent night.