A CANDLELIGHT CHRISTMAS
Friday, December 17, 2021
8:00 p.m.
High Center - Parmer Hall, Messiah University
Saturday, December 18, 2021
8:00 p.m.
Elizabethtown Church of the Brethren
Sunday, December 19, 2021
4:00 p.m.
Market Square Presbyterian Church, Harrisburg
Pre-Concert Prelude
Daniel Dorty, organ
(15 minutes prior to each concert)
This year’s Candlelight Christmas brings back the traditions of glorious music, audience sing-alongs of familiar carols, and closing moments surrounded by candlelight and the quiet peace of Silent Night, all of which were absent from our lives last year. Many of the selections are the kind that make the listener sit back and say, “Oh, I love this song,” as the music fills the room. You will hear favorites from past concerts including The Work of Christmas, This Christmastide, and the spirituals Go Where I Send Thee and Rise Up Shepherd and Follow. All these and more appear on our new 40th Anniversary double CD, Legacy, which will be available at the concert.
We honor the sacred mystery of the season with Gustav Holst’s Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence, Egil Hovland’s The Glory of the Father, and Matthew Culloton’s In Dulci Jubilo. We proudly feature a new work by Dan Forrest, a beautiful setting of a poem by Leslie Leyland Fields, Let the Stable Still Astonish. Commissioned for the Chorale’s 40th Anniversary, this new piece joins three other of Forrest’s works on the program — See Amid the Winter’s Snow, The First Noel, and Good Christian Men Rejoice. Holiday cheer abounds with Mack Wilberg’s Christmas is Coming and Gordon Langford’s Jingle Bells, arranged for the Kings’ Singers.
The Susquehanna Chorale will continue to livestream concerts to reach listeners unable to attend in person. But this year, especially, we invite you to share the spirit of the season with us. Welcome back to the music, the magic, and the 40-year legacy of A Candlelight Christmas.
- Linda L. Tedford; Artistic Director, Founder, and Conductor
Susquehanna Chorale Alumni are invited to join us at our Legacy: A Candlelight Christmas concerts on December 17,18, 19, and/or at our spring concerts, Legacy: A Season to Celebrate! on May 13 and 15. Former singers are invited to sing “Silent Night.” Our May concerts will feature sacred and secular music from our past, and former singers are invited to sing “Shenandoah.”
Please contact Molly Masser, our Administrator, (sc@susquehannachorale.org) and let her know if you plan to attend, or if you have any questions. We look forward to seeing you!