Los Angeles Children's Chorus Annual Winter Concert December 6, 2009

LOS ANGELES CHILDREN’S CHORUS ANNUAL WINTER CONCERT
FEATURES VIBRANT MIX OF CLASSICAL, FOLK AND CONTEMPORARY WORKS
FROM LATIN AMERICA, SPAIN AND CALIFORNIA

Sunday, December 6 and Sunday, December 13, 7:00 P.M., at Pasadena Presbyterian Church

(Pasadena, CA) November 25, 2009 – Los Angeles Children’s Chorus (LACC) presents a vibrant mix of classical, folk and contemporary works from Mexico, Spain, Venezuela, China and California at its popular annual Winter Concert on Sunday, December 6 and Sunday, December 13, 2009, 7:00 P.M., at Pasadena Presbyterian Church.

LACC Artistic Director Anne Tomlinson conducts the chorus’s renowned Concert Choir and Chamber Singers. Associate Artistic Director Mandy Brigham leads the Intermediate Choir and Assistant Artistic Director Amy Brehm leads the Apprentice Choir. The choirs will perform separately and combined.

The program begins with Cuncti Simus, a 15th Century Latin work from the Montserrat monastery in Spain that tells of the coming of the birth of Christ in a dance-like setting. Playing on the work’s setting, student dancer Margo Heston serves as a terpsichorean pied piper, leading the choir into the venue, where the singers will surround the audience and envelop it in sound. The work features soloists, small ensembles, choirs and instruments.

Other pieces include James Mulholland's spirited Come Let's Be Merry on an anonymous 17th Century text that heralds the season, Rachmaninoff's The Angel, set to a poem by Mikhail Lermontov, and John Adams’ haunting lullaby from El Niño entitled "The Palm" with choreography by Peter Sellars.

The choir also performs Winter by Zhou Long, an internationally acclaimed composer noted for blending ancient Chinese musical traditional with modern Western instruments and ensembles. The multi-tonal piece, in which the choir sings in both A Major and A Minor simultaneously, features a student reading a portion of the poem upon which the text is based. The program continues with the Mexican lullaby A la Puerta del Cielo; David Conte's lively Alleluia; Lullaby, written in 1977 for treble choir and organ by noted American composer Henry Mollicone; and Michael Haydn's Dixit Dominus, set to Psalm 110, featuring strings and LACC soloists Rachel Anacker, Ivy Beech and Caroline Olsen.

Concluding the concert are Brahms' Sonntag, an art song speaking of young love; the 16th Century Spanish Villancico Riu, riu chiu, made famous by Chanticleer; and the spiritual Go Where I Send Thee, which recounts various Biblical stories, each written in a different key.

Tickets for the Winter Concert are $42, $36 and $24; students are half price. Pasadena Presbyterian Church is located at 585 East Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena. For tickets and information, please call (626) 793-4231 or visit www.lachildrenschorus.org.

Official Website: http://www.lachildrenschorus.org