The Brockport College-Community Chorus and the Brockport High School Choir will appear together in this year’s “Sounds of the Season” Holiday Concert on Sunday, December 4, at 7:30 p.m. To accommodate the audiences who would typically attend their separate performances, this concert will be held at the Brockport High School Auditorium, 40 Allen Street, Brockport. Tickets are $5, and are available online at http://fineartstix.brockport.edu, by phone at 585-395-2787, or in person. SUNY Brockport’s current COVID-19 prevention guidelines can be found on the ticketing website and the Fine Arts Series Facebook page.
Elizabeth Banner, the music director for both ensembles is happy to do another joint concert, the last one having been five years ago. She added, “Especially at the holiday season, when togetherness is key, it’s wonderful to take part in something that not only unites our two organizations but the College and the Brockport communities themselves.”
A highlight of the concert will be the combined chorus’ performance of the “Hallelujah Chorus” from George Frideric Handel’s Messiah. The two vocal ensembles will also back up Brockport High School alumnus and noted tenor, Ben Monacelli, in a performance of the holiday favorite “The Christmas Song,” as well as Schubert’s more spiritual “Ave Maria.”
With its program of secular and religious music, the concert will also help honor some other holidays that fall at this time of year, with renditions of “Aeyaya Balano Sakkad,” to celebrate Diwali, and “S’vivon,” inspired by the spinning dreidels used to celebrate Chanukah.
In keeping with the theme of the two choruses joining together, the concert will conclude – as has become a tradition – with a song that reflects on the desire of all people to live in peace and harmony. The Christmas carol “Silent Night” was written in 1818 in Oberndorf, Austria, when that region had been divided up following the Napoleonic wars. It has long been thought of as a message of hope, most poignantly during the Christmas Truce of 1914, when soldiers from Germany, France, and Britain found themselves all singing this song on a Christmas Eve during World War I.
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