The Vashon Island Chorale will sing George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah,” one of the most frequently performed choral works in Western music, at 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Saturday, Dec. 1 and 3, and at 3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 4, at the Katherine L White Hall.

The performance will be the third time Vashon Island Chorale (VIC) sings the beloved composition, and the first time VIC Artistic Director Gary D. Cannon will conduct it after having studied and sung the piece countless times. Nonetheless, he continues to be amazed at Handel’s ingenuity — how “the orchestra behaves in tandem with the chorus or soloist, the way he carefully paces every aspect of every movement.”

The challenge for Cannon in rehearsing the “Messiah” was to encourage the 100-voice chorale to “sound as lithe and light-footed” as the smaller choirs typical of Handel’s era. Another characteristic form of Baroque music is the dance suite, which Cannon said can be heard in sacred oratorios like the “Messiah.” He conducts the choir to try to convey the “elegance and grace of Baroque dances into the music.”

Three local soloists will join the chorale, including Vashon soprano Holly Boaz, tenor Brandon Higa and baritone Charles Robert Stephens.

Islander Marita Ericksen is the assistant director. Concertmistress Karin Choo and 17 musicians, some playing modern replicas of Baroque instruments, will make up the orchestra.

Cannon believes Handel’s beloved work, composed in 1741, includes more than the scriptural text and the story that drew in Christian Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. Cannon credits the music itself for the enduring appeal of the work.

“It’s like a collection of emotions that together comprise the human experience,” he said. “This is rich, probing music that inspires listeners, and performers for that matter, to share an emotional experience. And that, after all, is the whole point of music.”

Tickets are sold at Vashon Center for the Arts, vashoncenterforthearts.org and Heron’s Nest.