Holiday Concert A Sell Out!

Our December 19 holiday concert was a sell out, and we're grateful to all our fans, friends, families, concert staff and other supporters for making it possible. We're also grateful to the Coburn Children's Choir for joining us, as usual, as concert partners. And thanks, of course, to Misha for his musical leadership and inspiration.

We followed the holiday concert by joining the New Valley Symphony for a reprise of the Vivaldi Gloria (R. 589), and then we sang at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in the annual LA County Holiday Festival, broadcast on KCET and streamed everywhere live on the web. So it was the usual busy year-end season!

We start singing again on January 12, looking ahead to our spring concert on May 1 featuring Rutter's Mass of the Children. Some of us will be going to NY in May to join other choristers at Carnegie Hall where Rutter will conduct that very piece!

Happy New Year and here's to another year of good music!

HOLIDAY CONCERTS THIS WEEKEND

It's showtime for the Chorale! This Saturday we perform our annual holiday show at the United Presbyterian Church in Burbank, at 7:30 PM. As usual, we will be joined by the Coburn Children's Choir from the outstanding Coburn School of Music. We will sing Vivaldi's Gloria, R.589, plus various holiday favorites. On Sunday afternoon, we will join the New Valley Symphony at Burbank's Hall of Liberty for a reprise of the Gloria, the Hallelujah Chorus and a few seasonal songs. On Christmas eve, we will finish our season by appearing at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in the annual LA County Holiday Celebration. Then we will rest, starting our new season of rehearsals in January.

Aside from all the above, we recently sang at the Burbank Town Hall for the city's annual tree lighting ceremony. We were joined by Mickey and Minnie Mouse and Santa himself. See the picture!!

Burbank Chorale Launches 90th Anniversary Season!

The Burbank Chorale has been entertaining audiences in Burbank, CA and its environs since 1920. This month we've launched our 2009-2010, 90th Anniversary Season, with rehearsals for our two holiday performances. Our traditional holiday concert will take place on Saturday, December 19, 2009, at 7:30 PM, at the First United Methodist Church in Burbank. We invite our fans, old and new, to mark your calendars! The concert will feature Vivaldi's wonderful, ever-popular Gloria (RV 589), plus a collection of seasonal songs, and some special visual material to help us reflect on the many years we've been around.

Once again we will follow our own concert by joining the New Valley Symphony on Sunday, December 20, at 2:00 PM, at Burbank's Liberty Hall. We will reprise the Gloria and add a few holiday favorites to the New Valley's concert presentation.

The full celebration of our 90th will take place at our spring concert in May. More on that as our plans develop.

Spring Concert: May 9, 2009

Our Spring concert will take place on Saturday, May 9, at the First United Methodist Church in Burbank, 700 North Glenoaks Blvd., at 7:30 PM. The concert is entitled ANOTHER NIGHT AT THE OPERA. Indeed the bulk of the music is from operas, including a medley from "Porgy and Bess," Verdi opera choruses and even an exciting choral version of that mock-operatic masterpiece by Freddy Mercury, "Bohemian Rhapsody," first featured on Queen's album, "A Night at the Opera." We're also honoring Henry Purcell's 350th with a performance of "Come Ye Sons of Art." Joining the bill will be our usual partners, the always beautiful Children's Choir of the Coburn School. If you're within the "sound of my voice," join us for an enjoyable evening of happy Spring music.

Holiday Concerts a Success; Upcoming Performances

The Chorale was busy in late December with three performances. We began on December 20 with our annual holiday concert--an SRO sellout featuring the Mozart Coronation Mass, Handel's Zadok the Priest and seasonal favorites. The next day we joined the New Valley Symphony at the Hall of Liberty in Burbank, serving as the chorus for its holiday concert. We reprised the Coronation Mass, adding a crowd-pleasing Hallelujah Chorus and Christmas carols for a very enjoyable afternoon.

Our next performance is on February 8 at 2:00, when we rejoin the New Valley Symphony at the Hall of Liberty. We will be singing popular Opera pieces, including Verdi favorites--the Brindisi from La Traviata and the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves from Nabucco. The concert is free, so fans in the area, come see us and the NVS for a musical Sunday afternoon.

And save the date: our Spring concert will be on May 9. More info to follow.

Christmas Concert Approaches

We're now a few weeks away from our annual Christmas concert. It will take place on Saturday, December 20, at 7:30 PM, at the Burbank First United Methodist Church, 700 North Glenoaks Boulevard, Burbank, CA!

The title of our concert is "Rejoice," a refrain featured in one of the very festive pieces we'll be singing, Handel's coronation anthem, "Zadok the Priest." In the same spirit, our featured work is Mozart's Coronation Mass. We're also singing two gorgeous, a cappella devotional pieces in a very different style and mood from the Handel and Mozart works: a selection from Rachmaninoff's Vespers, No. 7, "The Six Psalms," and another Russian beauty, the Hymn to the Holy Mother, No. 11, from Tchaikovsky's Liturgy of St. John Chrystosom. The rich harmonies are joy to sing. We'll also do some tuneful Christmas and Hannukah favorites and end with our usual sing-along!

All are welcome to join the festivities. Pre-concert tickets are $15 and can be purchased on our website at www.burbankchorale.org.

Evensong at King's College

A week ago I fulfilled one of my choral singer's dreams: I heard the King's College Choir perform a choral evensong service in its own "chapel" at Cambridge. I put "chapel" in quotes because the building is really a small gothic cathedral built in early Tudor times. It is unquestionably one of the most exquisite small cathedrals of its type, with beautiful vaulted ceilings and talled stained glass windows filling the side walls with color and light.

The King's Choir is of course well know to choral music fans; it has made many good recordings, including one of the Vivaldi Magnificat which we sang last year (with comparable beauty, I might add!). As many also know, choral evensong is a regular evening service in the Anglican Church, one in which the choir takes a major role, singing psalms, anthems and other liturgical texts in between spoken "lessons" read from the Bible. The King's Choir is small in number (advertised at 16 though it looked a bit larger to me), and, with young boys singing the upper parts, it is literally small in stature. It wore white robes with red trim, and looked and sounded beautiful performing both a capella and with organ in the candle-lit cathedral. The music was almost all of 20th Century vintage, including a short Magnificat by William Walton and a powerful Anthem by John Joubert. "Modern" music seems to be the norm at King's these days. I guess the older material gets "old" after a while, especially given their steady schedule of services. Remarkably, the Choir performs six such services per week. That's a lot of music to learn, especially since the participants have school work to do in addition. On the seventh day, Monday, the Choir gets a day off and the service is sung by the King's Voices, which is the College's mixed choir. (Perhaps the same lower voices are involved, making it a seven-day proposition for those singers.)

If you're ever in London, and have time for a day trip, it's a 45-minute train ride up to Cambridge. The evensong service takes place at 5:30 PM and is free to the public. A memorable experience to be had for any choral singer or choral music fan.