Have we had a holiday season in living memory in greater need of inspiriting music!? That was the plan for the Consort’s December performances, anyway: programs of venturesome music that resonates with the season, a kind of resistance to the despoliation and division of the times, by sharing art.
First….
The December 6th and 7th concerts (our debut experiment with repeated programs) were conceived as interweaving of two distinct, contrasting groups and sound worlds, one with exactly 16 strings managed by four people, and the other with 472 strings managed by two! If that seems out of whack, consider that the two cohorts are pretty evenly matched in the magic of the music they make:
Charles Wuorinen’s hard-edged happy birthday to colleague Ollie Knussen is a stand-in for the Consort’s own 50th, and also points to the 50/50-ness of our having spent half of our own half-century in each of two millennia. From there, we alternate 16 and 472 string bands between Juri Seo’s intimate musical emanations from observing the cycles of nature; Bill Bolcom’s Genesis rags; George Crumb’s radiant translations of Giotto’s nativities into sound; Arvo Pärt’s ageless, ineffable plea for peace (it’s the Estonian composer’s 90th birthday this year); finally turning to John Adams’ rambunctious, onomatopoetic “Hallelujah” for an exuberant close. At the end, we plan a little surprise and quiet act of solidarity between the bands. May the world find such peace.
Then…..
The period following the American Civil War was another time, like our own only more so, of profound division, an “inflection point” if ever there was one. Searching for consolation and healing, people responded hungrily to Charles Dickens’ writing and indefatigable reading tours in the U.S. His “A Christmas Carol” was a perennial favorite, and corresponded with an outpouring of original carols – many, like the story of Scrooge, essentially secular in character – that we consider “traditional” today even when their melodies date centuries earlier.
In a special holiday program at historic St. Mark’s on Capitol Hill, the Consort will visit a number of these classic 19th century carols, and some new ones, from England and the U.S. These serve as a fitting prelude to the return to D.C., after several years missing, of Jon Deak’s immortal setting of the Dickens, “The Passion of Scrooge or A Christmas Carol.” The Consort will be joined by baritone Aaron Engebreth, whose astonishing agility in serially inhabiting Ebenezer Scrooge, Jacob Marley and other characters (joined by members of the ensemble also playing parts in the story) will amaze you!
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In the Spirit
at 5pm December 6 & 2pm December 72025
Hirshhorn Museum’s Ring Auditorium
- Charles Wuorinen
- Fifty – Fifty
- Juri Seo
- Winter-Spring, Fall-Winter from Infinite Season
- Eleanor Alberga
- Two Piano Suite
- George Crumb
- Little Suite for Christmas
- Arvo Pärt
- Da Pacem Domine
- John Adams
- Hallelujah Junction
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The Passion of Scrooge
at 5pm December 202025
St. Mark’s on Capitol Hill
- Good King Wenseslas (trad.)
- Lori Laitman
- Snowy Night
- We Three Kings (trad.)
- It Came Upon a Midnight Clear (trad.)
- Nicholas Maw
- Swete Jesu
- In the Bleak Midwinter (trad.)
- Deck the Hall (trad.)
- Oliver Tarney
- Bulalulow
- Here we come a-wassailing (trad.)
- Jon Deak
- The Passion of Scrooge