Chorale to celebrate the season in Kay White Hall

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Vashon Island Chorale’s 66 singers will lift their voices in “A Pacific Northwest Christmas,” a concert celebrating the season with both secular and sacred music, at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 9, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 10, at Vashon Center for the Arts.

The concert will boast ten regional composers’ works, ranging from Reginald Unterseher’s ebullient “Christmas Joy” to Jessica French’s nostalgic “The Oxen,” to Giselle Wyers’ reflective “After the Winter.”

There will be a world premiere work by Calvin Rice, plus Morten Lauridsen’s beloved “O magnum mysterium.”

The McMurray Middle School Choir will make an appearance, adding the voices of young singers to the mix — a treasured addition to any holiday concert.

The audience, too, will be invited to sing along with a selection of holiday classics.

The Chorale, founded in 1989 under the banner of Island Singers, was incorporated as a nonprofit and became known as Vashon Island Chorale in the mid-1990s.

In 2022, 16 chorale members joined Giselle Wyers’ UW Chorale and members of other Seattle-area choirs in New York for the East Coast premiere of “And All Shall Be Well,” a seven-movement work by Wyers, at Carnegie Hall. This piece was commissioned for the Chorale by Jo Ann Bardeen in memory of her parents.

The choir’s artistic director is Gary D. Cannon. Marita Ericksen is the group’s assistant director.

At the holiday concert, Linda Lee will be at the piano and will be joined by Evan Stults to play the four pieces of “Christmas Joy” by Unterseher. Soloists from within the Chorale are Amy Cole, John de Groen, Ruby Johnson and Beverly Osgood Reil.