CHIMACUM — Two musical forces, the Peninsula Singers and the Port Townsend Community Orchestra, will reunite for a concert in the Chimacum High School auditorium, 91 West Valley Road, at7:30 p.m. Saturday.
Admission is free to the concert, which also promises a sing-along of holiday carols.
The singers-and-orchestra concert has as its centerpiece Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Hodie,” Latin for “This Day.”
The composer meant Christmas, said Dewey Ehling, who conducted the singers and orchestra in the same program last month in Port Angeles.
The maestro will give a short discussion of the night’s music in the auditorium at 6:45 p.m. Saturday.
“Hodie,” which premiered 60 years ago, is “one of the finest compositions I have ever been privileged to perform,” Ehling said.
‘In awe’
“Each time I hear it or work to prepare it, I am in such awe,” he said, adding that he first conducted this work about 40 years ago and has never forgotten the music.
In “Hodie,” the Christmas story is told by the Trebles, seven women from the chorus.
Next comes a fanfare: “He shall be great, and shall be called the son of the Highest, Emmanuel, God with us.”
A later part brings a fully orchestrated March of the Three Kings, describing the gifts they bear.
Then the Epilogue finishes the whole work with praise for the season.
Christmas classics
The old German hymn “Lo, How a Rose e’er Blooming,” Martin and Plane’s “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” will be part of the evening, too, Ehling noted.
For him, it is a distinct pleasure, this pairing of orchestra and 43-voice chorus, which includes soloists Joel Yelland, Nicholas Fritschler, Linda Grubb, Leona Voss and Jaie Livingstone.
The seven Trebles include Ehling’s wife of 43 years, Lauretta Ehling, as well as Sharon Fritschler, Dorothy Hensey, Barbara Hughes, Cynthia McNulty, Valerie McRoberts and Elizabeth Perez.
For more about the two musical groups, visit www.PortTownsendOrchestra.org and www.peninsulasingers.org.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
