O.k. – there are concerts this month in our area, and other performances, but there are no festivals. Sometimes it can be hard to tell which is which, though a festival ‘by any other name would…’ Take an event of about two weeks ago. It wasn’t a choir festival. There were five or six choirs, maybe ten anthems, and several score singers, but it was not a choir festival. The concert had another name, and a cause other than just music.
There’s more to be said about that event, but first some thoughts on another larger festival that isn’t a festival nearby.
Bunches of Britten
All of the Benjamin Britten music being presented in our area by opera company, orchestra, soloists and choral group over the next two months isn’t an actual Britten festival, but almost a virtual one. The first event, on 19, 23 & 26 October, is Albert Herring, Britten’s comedy opera, performed by the Repertory Opera Company in Pomona. The ROC is the first of three groups offering up Britten in October, and one of just two purely Britten performances locally in our neighborhood this fall. The second October event with Britten is on the 20th in Claremont, with his Simple Symphony being performed along Verdi and Wagner as part of the Claremont Symphony Orchestra’s “Centennial Celebrations.” Then, on the 27th, the Millennium Consort Singers will present “Songs of Celebration,” a program celebrating both St. Cecilia and Britten’s centenary in a program including both his music and others.
No one nearby has scheduled a concert on Britten’s birthday, the 22nd of November. Instead, the second purely Britten concert of the fall is on 19 November, just three days before. Charles Kamm, tenor, Gayle Blankenburg, piano, and Rachel Vetter Huang, violin, will present “Music by Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) on his Centenary,” at the Athenaeum at Claremont McKenna College.
The last two programs of this imagined Britten festival fall on the 6th, 7th and 8th of December, and it seems fitting that the two Britten works programmed for that weekend were penned by Benjamin Britten together onboard ship as he traveled back to England in 1942. The Pomona College Choir is including his Hymn to St. Cecilia on their program for the 6th and 8th in Claremont, while the Claremont Chorale is bringing us the SATB arrangement of what is probably Britten’s most popular contribution to the Christmas season, the Ceremony of Carols, as part of “An Olde English Christmas,” the chorale’s Christmas offering. There you have it – a near festival for you to consider.
Choral stuff
Back to this month’s concerts – besides the Millennium Consort Singers on the 27th, the other choral event in the between two colleges area is the University of La Verne Fall Choral Organizations Showcase, with the ULV Chamber Singers, the University Chorale and others on 25 & 26 October, in La Verne. It’s nice to have choral choices this early in the season, so enjoy yourselves, choral fans.
The interfaith concert mentioned at the top of this page had choral anthems, rounds, audience singing, chant of various kinds, and dancing and drumming. Held at Temple Beth Israel in Pomona, “Sacred Sounds V” celebrated the diversity of faiths in our area, and the different parts that music plays in these faiths. Beyond these successes, it did something probably not part of its objectives. By bringing choirs together from Upland, Montclair and Pomona, it provided welcome proof that there is potential for building our own choral community right here.
Today’s link is in honor of the audience sing-along at Sacred Sounds V in September.