Merry Christmas

Well, well, well… ever notice how humanity actually can take a pause in its belligerence and actually espouse peace, hope, acceptance and love. Yes, we are once again through Advent and into the final week before Christmas. And, over the weekend I was treated to three very different musical moments. All of these spoke to the most basic of human conditions – the need to enhance our brains… and in each setting, words were spoken by the emcee indicating a desire for more harmony in the world, as we listened to the various musical offerings…

Saturday night it was the Okanagan Symphony and a presentation titled Comfort & Joy. The first half was more Comfort with a number of variations on various Christmas hymns. There also was a rendition of Because We Believe written by David Foster, Amy Gillies Foster and Andrea Bocelli. The second half was more energetic with many well-known Christmas songs. Throughout the evening we were entertained by Ken Lavigne (a very good tenor) and/or the Okanagan Children’s Choir. It was both pleasant and uplifting; moreover it was a drastic change from the night before in a neighbouring building where a series of fights broke out in the midst of a Junior A hockey game.

Sunday afternoon the Naramata Community Choir presented their Christmas Concert – Light a Candle. Due to there being no room in Naramata this year, the event was held at the Penticton United Church (which is up for sale). While the recital was only an hour, and did contain three different soloists, it was a very well-done presentation. The only flaw was the they had us all join them in the final number which was Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus. I’m not sure why excellent choirs insist on doing such sing-alongs – first of all, we miss out on hearing them beautifully portray such pieces, and secondly, the audience is a poor second fiddle, barely able to keep pace, let alone hit the majority of the notes (particularly when the sopranos decide to descant their portion of the piece). Otherwise, it was a restorative and joyful performance.

From there it was off to the Anglican church (St. Saviour’s) for Evening Vespers, which was actually their monthly Jazz Vespers – this time more appropriately called a Celtic Christmas, complete with both viola and harp (along with guitar & woodwinds – the percussionist had slipped on some ice while loading his drums and thus was absent). Since arriving a couple years ago, the young Anglican priest has upgraded the Jazz Vespers into more of a true Vespers service (much like I enjoy when I attend Fourth Presbyterian in Chicago). As a result there is more theme within the presentation resulting in a somewhat more powerful moment. Again there was a time for congregational singing and again it was difficult for the people in the pews to match the songstress leading the hymn – probably would have been better for her to just solo it for verse one, let the people try on their own verse two and then solo the third verse. But in any case, it was a service worth attending and definitely brought the weekend to a spiritually refreshing conclusion.

Now if we could only get our leaders (internationally, nationally, provincially and municipally) to follow up with more effort at peace, hope, acceptance and love maybe next year’s Christmas season wouldn’t be such a variant on normal life…

Merry Christmas…

g.w.