Are we already in the final holiday countdown? You bet we are.
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Traditional Christmas
When and where: Dec. 15, 4 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., Bell Performing Arts Centre
Dec. 22, 4 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., Orpheum Theatre
Christmas with Chor Leoni
When and where: Dec. 19 at 7:30 p.m., Dec. 20 at 5 p.m. and 8 p.m., Dec. 21 at 2 p.m., 5 p.m. and 8 p.m., Andrew’s-Wesley United Church
Ding Dong
When and where: Dec. 21 at 3 p.m., The Red Barn, 333 Market Ave., Delta
Dec. 23, 7:30 p.m., St. James Community Square, 3214 W. 10th Ave.
The 21st Christmas Reprise
When and where: Dec. 21 at 2 p.m., Holy Rosary Cathedral
Dec. 21 at 7 p.m., Sanctuary on 6th, 207 6th St., New Westminster
Are we already in the final holiday countdown? You bet we are. But even as the last days before Christmas tick off the calendar, there’s no reason not take a break from all the hubbub and enjoy some soothing or energizing music for the season.
Let’s start with something that pleases year in and year out: the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s A Traditional Christmas programs with host Christopher Gaze. These already started up some days ago in various suburban run-outs; but if you’ve left it to the last minute to try and get tickets, there is a quartet of big venue presentations still to be sampled. On Dec. 15 there are two shows at Surrey’s flagship venue, the Bell Centre for the Performing Arts. Then, if you can hold out until Dec. 22 there are two performances downtown at the Orpheum.
Choirs and Christmas go together. Chor Leoni, hard on the heels of its always impressive Remembrance Day shows, is back in action with no less than six presentations of Christmas with Chor Leoni downtown at the newly renovated St. Andrew’s-Wesley United Church: one show Dec. 19; two shows Dec.20; and an astonishing three shows (is this sounding like that carol about partridges and pear trees?) Dec. 21.
Chor Leoni’s holiday spectacular tends to be a tasting menu running to classical selections, plus contemporary, pop, and jazz numbers. There’s often a premiere —the Lions are big on enriching the male voice repertoire — and this year it’s The Long Night, by Cantiones and Baryluk, arranged by Chor Leoni maven Erick Lichte.
Musica intima has the latest instalment of its slightly irreverent holiday show ding dong (no capital letters for mi), a popular event that offers music for “burnt-out musicians; cynical grinches; and diehard Christmas fans.” One show in Kits, the night before the Night Before Christmas, Dec. 23 at St. James Community Square, with an earlier runout to The Red Barn in Delta, Dec.21.
If you don’t already have your tickets for the Vancouver Cantata Singers’s wildly popular Christmas Reprise — the 21st edition, at Holy Rosary Cathedral, Dec. 21 —you may well be out of luck. The good news is that there is another performance that evening, in New West, at The Sanctuary on Sixth (formerly New Westminster United Church, still on the corner of Queen Street and Sixth Avenue). Artistic director Paula Kremer always programs with flair — though of course it wouldn’t be a VCS Christmas without Franz Biebl’s iconic one-hit wonder, Ave Maria.