Vancouver countertenor and baroque specialist Nicholas Burns is very in demand this Messiah season
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Music on Main
Music for the Winter Solstice
When: Dec. 11 and 12, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Heritage Hall, 3102 Main St.
Tickets and info: musiconmain.ca
Vancouver Bach Choir
Handel’s Messiah
When: Dec. 14, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Orpheum Theatre, 601 Smithe St.
Tickets and info: vancouverbachchoir.com
Vancouver Symphony Orchestra
Home Alone in Concert
When: Dec. 18 and 19, 7 p.m.
Where: Orpheum Theatre, 601 Smithe St.
Tickets and info: vancouversymphony.ca
Early Music Vancouver
Festive Cantatas: Bach & Zelenka
When: Dec. 22, 3 p.m.
Where: Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, 6265 Crescent Rd.
Tickets and info: earlymusic.bc.ca
Has anyone, ever, been able to say truthfully they’re entirely ready for the holiday season? Well, it’s December, and long since time to start thinking of music events. Here are three suggestions for Christmas-related events, plus one more seasonal offering.
The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra does the holidays in splendid fashion, what with its extensive Traditional Christmas programs running from Dec. 11 through 22, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Dec. 14 and 15, plus various movie and music options. This year I think the live orchestra version of John Hughes’s Home Alone (1990), that irresistible blend of mayhem and merriment, might prove just the thing. There are two screenings at the Orpheum.
As always, there are several local performances of Handel’s Messiah. Of course we all thrill to the great choruses, but oratorio is really just opera without the sets and costumes and, as such, getting just the right complement of soloists is a huge part of any Messiah’s success. Conductor Les Dala knows his singers, and has put together a fine quartet of them.
Soprano Caitlin Wood is no stranger to Vancouver audiences, having sung in multiple local productions. Vancouver countertenor and baroque specialist Nicholas Burns is very in demand this Messiah season, singing it in Ottawa before his Vancouver gig, and then flying off a few days later to do it with the Toronto Symphony. Tenor Spencer Britten has done exceptional work for City Opera Vancouver and was a featured artist in Against the Grain Theatre’s Messiah Complex, a big hit from a few years ago. Bass-baritone Jonathon Adams, introduced to local audiences by Early Music Vancouver, rounds out this particularly strong cadre of soloists.
And speaking of Early Music Vancouver, its long-running Festive Cantatas project at the Chan Centre is always one of the musical treats of the season. This December sees a matchup of the ultra-familiar — Bach’s cantata Gloria in excelsis Deo, BWV 191 (“based entirely,” EMV tells us, on the Gloria from the incomparable B minor Mass,) — and the far less well-known, in this case the Missa Nativitatis Domini by Bohemian master Jan Dismas Zelenka.
EMV regulars know only too well that a wealth of forgotten seasonal music richly deserves our attention. Not exactly a household name these days, Zelenka was widely celebrated in the 18th century. A team of soloists is headed by EMV’s own Suzie LeBlanc, plus members of the Vancouver Chamber Choir; the whole grand, festive enterprise will be conducted by Alexander Weimann.
Finally, for those who wish to celebrate the change from fall to winter, Music on Main presents the latest edition of its Music for the Winter Solstice project, over two evenings at Main Street’s Heritage Hall. This year’s alternative to fa la las and hallelujahs is particularly intimate—just violin, cello, voice, and piano, in music that’s quiet and contemplative.