Heard a fabulous bit of choral music Sunday at St Joseph Church, right here in Capitol Hill, thanks to the SU choirs.
Great stuff. The started off by singing Benjamin Britten's "Hodie Christus Natus Est" from the loft and it was just awesome. . .
Here's a version that may not be quite as good, but it'll let you know what the song sounds like:
They also did O Holy Night.
Who was Adolphe Adam, and why is that song so good? No idea. But here's a beautiful version in Swedish:
Thanks for telling us about that one, Nathan.
Speaking of Capitol Hill, here's an unrelated neighborhood note:
As you can see over on CHS, our neighborhood really went for Obama. In our precint (43-1851), it was like 94%!
Okay, to close, here are three more of my favorite seasonal songs, some of which I've mentioned before, and some that are new to me:
Still can't believe Jim Nabors sings so pretty.
Gina told us about this one the other day. Warning: it's awful cute, and it'll likely get stuck in your head.
Finally, some folks we know are headed to Hawaii for the holidays, and every time I think about that I start humming this song:
How about y'all? Any favorites you'd like to share? Maybe we can all get together for some caroling . . .
I too am a Benjamin Britten Fan. While at St.Olaf (my freshman year) we sang This Little Babe, an amazing Britten song. It is especially amazing live, but the recordings are good too. Check it out.
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p.s. I know I'm slightly biased, but, you pretty much can not go wrong with anything sung during the Christmas Festival at Olaf!
Do you remember when Grandma used to buy us family season tickets to the Helena Symphony and Chorale? They performed "Hodie" one year, and Dr. Strickler printed us out the Latin words and a translation.
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P.S. And one year when I sang in the Northwest Choral Society out of Des Plaines, we performed Benjamin Britten's "A Ceremony of Carols"* ... difficult for me to get used to, but I ended up loving it!
ReplyDelete* which includes "This Little Babe"
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Maybe someday those "some folks" will take us all to Hawaii for Christmas (hint hint - in case "some folks" are reading)
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Marisa
Actually, the SU choirs did quite a bit of Britten's Ceremony of Carols, including the Little Babe. Were they at St Olaf levels? No, but they were pretty good and it was live and in a church with good acoustics, so I'll take it.
ReplyDeleteYou can listen to a pretty good rendition of This Little Babe on imeem.
And for info on the St Olaf xmas festival, including online streaming, national broadcast (yes, they're that good) and CD purchasing, see
www.stolaf.edu/christmasfest.
Although I don't recall that Hodie, I am thankful for my memories of both Dr Strickler and those Helena Symphony concerts.
Lastly, I'll second Marisa's hints; Emily and I would love to spend a holiday on Christmas Island!
For those keeping score at home, please note that I accidentally missed a comment when "approving" this morning (maybe a sign it's time to turn that feature off?) . . .
ReplyDeleteIn any case, thanks for all the great comments!