Arcady will be celebrating the holidays with their ‘Christmas with Arcady’ concert, which will be held at St. Andrew’s United Church in Brantford on Saturday, November 30, 2024.
This year’s program, which will begin at 7:30 p.m., includes brand new holiday works from Arcady composers, including The Christmas Blessing by Emma Theresa Verdonk (Brantford) featuring her sister Adriana Verdonk as the soprano soloist, and a Sussex Carol arrangement by Shawn Oakes (Vittoria). Patrons will also be treated to Bergandacht (“Mountain Prayer”), a setting of an 18th-century traditional Austrian Christmas yodel by our associate composer Benjamin Gabbay (Toronto) featuring soprano soloist and former Arcady Emerging Artist Sophia Korz.
The presentation of local Canadian talent would not be complete without the Christmas works of Arcady’s very own artistic director Ronald Beckett (Brantford). For this year’s opener, Beckett has arranged a dramatized setting of Touro-louro-louro by French classic composer Nicolas Saboly who is credited with authorship of many of the traditional French Noëls Provençaux that we now know and love.
Other new Beckett works include I live, a setting of a poem by Arcady youth Niesje Van’t Hoff, Of one that is so fair featuring Vivien Illion, another former Arcady Emerging Artist and present Masters candidate at Schulich School of Music (McGill), and The Magi, a setting of a poem by William Butler Yeats. As is always the case with Arcady Christmas concerts, the program will be a mixture of secular and sacred, featuring dramatized segments, Arcady’s string ensemble, and both instrumental and vocal soloists.
Arcady’s chamber orchestra, chorus, and youth chorus will present this dazzling concert with artistry and enthusiasm. This troupe of professional musicians includes David Rehner (violin) who is the concertmaster with The Rose Orchestra Brampton and the Etobicoke Philharmonic, John Wiebe (viola) who is a regular performer with the London Symphonia, the Nota Bene Baroque Players, and the Windsor Symphony Orchestra, Linda Choi (violin) of the Oakville Symphony, and Patrick Theriault (cello) a freelance player from London.
