The thing about Christmas music isn’t that some people love it and some people hate it–what’s interesting is that the love and the hate are about the same things. We know people who have petitioned to have their workplaces not play Christmas music, and we find that rather telling. Because it’s not the music itself, not really, and not even what it represents, but what what it represents represents.

Let’s unpack that. What we’re saying here is that what we think of as Christmas music follows two main strains–call them Jesus Music and Santa Music–and they have both been overdone, at least for many folks, to the point of being oppressive. And so the complex higher truths represented by each have, over the years, become sullied not only by commercial oversaturation but also by cultural forces that have drifted us away from “Comfort” and “Joy.”

To some degree we’ve all become a little jaded about all of this. Santa is a lie; the cookies make you fat; the presents are just more junk to clutter up your garage; the tree is dangerous for the cat and full of spiders and starts shedding dead needles all over the living room floor and ultimately has to be taken to the curb and hauled off to the dump. Families are scattered to the four winds; travel is expensive at best and dangerous at worst; “home for the holidays” has become a sad joke, an excuse for arguments and disappointments; the ceremony of innocence is drowned; the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. And let’s not even get into what’s happened with the Jesus part of the story.

Phew! Grim sitch, eh? Yet what remains is the durability of the core mythological reality–that this is the time of year when we face down the darkest of dark, lay up stores of good food and good cheer, make the best of the cold weather and the shortening days and the relentlessly bad news, hold each other closer, huddle together against the chills and the terrors of Winter, telling tales of the return of the Light. You really don’t have to believe literally in “Santa” or “Jesus” or even “The Sun” to experience the realities they embody–Santa brings the goodies and Jesus brings the Light.

This, obviously, is exactly why we celebrate Christmas at the Winter Solstice. The darkest, shortest day of the year is also when it starts to turn around. The central message of every form of Christianity is that God suffers with us and redeems the world’s fallen nature. The central message of the Santa version of Christmas–which we might as well identify with Yule–is that virtue and community (“being good little boys and girls”) triumph over poverty and starvation. The central message of the Winter Solstice is that the Sun is Invincible.

So, Christmas music. Some of it is cheery, and it can seem desperately cheery, like an ice-rimed grimace. Some is gloomy, and can seem despairingly gloomy. And for the most part it’s the cheery stuff that gets on our nerves, right? “Jingle Bells” and whatnot? Ugh. Sickeningly sweet, like those cookies, drenched in frosting, keeping us up all night with heartburn and giving us nightmares of wicked sugar plum fairies. But the gloomy stuff can seem pretty overrich and sappy too, if you’ve had enough of it.

What I’m proposing today is that you let all that go. Give it up. Get back into the Christmas spirit. Be of good cheer. It might take a real effort, but it’ll be worth it.

Besides, what are you gonna do, be all Bah Humbug forever?

Good cheer

The choirs are, as always, going to have the lion’s share of terrific holiday concerts–so we refer you to OAW choral expert Daryl Browne for guidance. Read her overall holiday choral previews column right here, and her take on Julian Perkins’ first Messiah with Portland Baroque Orchestra and Cappella Romana here and here.

If you’re looking for a perfectly straightforward Christmas concert, you could do a lot worse than any of a handful of concerts presented by the Oregon Symphony this month. This weekend is the oh-so-English Christmas movie Love Actually in concert, with the score performed live by the orchestra (note that Martin “Bilbo Baggins” Freeman remains rather nude throughout much of this movie, so take heed before bringing children or prudes).

Next Wednesday, it’s Comfort & Joy: Songs of Good Cheer with OSO and the Oregon Chorale, and this is your chance to finally sing along with the orchestra after all those years holding it in during the catchy bits of Beethoven symphonies. The following weekend it’s the 25th anniversary of Gospel Christmas, with Charles Floyd and the NW Community Gospel Chorus joining the orchestra for a concert of Gospel cheer.

The following week, the glorious OSO brass and percussion sections present Holiday Brass (the 18th in Portland, the 19th in Salem). There’s something very Christmasy about brass choirs; add narrator Coty Raven Morris and you’ve got a winning combo.

Finally, there’s A Charlie Brown Christmas–Live!, with Deanna Tham leading the orchestra through Vince Gauraldi’s perfectly balanced (i.e., wistful but never too jaunty) score as live actors perform in front of an animated backdrop. That one happens Dec. 21-23 at The Schnitz, where it will probably be snowing. This classic All-American Christmas story is about as classic and All-American and Christmasy as it gets. If you’re going out only once for holiday festivities, this could be the one.

***

The other leading candidate for “if you can only do one” is The Nutcracker. Oregon Ballet Theatre’s production is running at the Keller December 7-24, presented by a fine troupe doing the original Balanchine choreography, which is about as traditional as you can get without actually going to church. Bonus points for the OBT Orchestra, who perform the full Tchaikovsky score for all but two performances.

Eugene Ballet is also doing The Nutcracker, Dec. 19-24, with their resident Orchestra NEXT performing the score (you may remember this lot from their recording of Kenji Bunch’s The Snow Queen, which you can read about here and listen to here).

In Bend, on Dec. 6-15 at Mountain View High Auditorium, the Central Oregon School of Ballet presents its own Nutcracker, with choreography by COSB directors Joshua D. Deininger & Elizabeth Voiles. In Southern Oregon, Studio Roxander presents its Nutcracker on Dec. 13-22 at Crater Performing Arts Center in Central Point. On the coast, at Tillamook High School Auditorium, Oregon Coast Dance Center presents their Nutcracker on Dec. 13 & 14. A touring Nutcracker rolls into Salem’s Elsinore Theatre on Dec. 17 and the Ross Ragland Theater in Klamath Falls on Dec. 18, performed by the international World Ballet Company.

You can read more about these ballets (and plenty more, including a staging of Nightmare Before Christmas) over here at Jamuni Chiarini’s latest DanceWatch.

***

You’ll get a chance to hear a totally different take on Tchaikovsky’s perfect winter music on the 15th and 16th at The Old Madeleine Church, when 45th Parallel Universe’s “North Pole Cello Sextet” (power couple Marilyn de Oliveira and Trevor Fitzpatrick plus four other cellists) perform their arrangement of Ellington & Strayhorn’s arrangement of The Nutcracker Suite. This sextet has been doing this for a few years now, and last year at The Old Church it sounded like this:

What, you want more frosty Russian music? Eugene Symphony’s latest round of conductor jousting happens next Thursday, Dec. 12, when Rory Macdonald vies for the crown by conducting Rachmaninov’s beautifully Romantic Symphony No. 2. Also on the program: pianist Anthony Ratinov performing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 (remember how they’re doing all five this season?) and Anna Clyne’s Masquerade.

Sounding together again

A few of the other orchestras we discussed in October (read those roundups here and here) have holiday concerts coming up, ranging from “overtly religious” to “vaguely wintry” to “happening in December.” Let’s start with the latter.

On December 15 in Oregon City, the Willamette Falls Symphony presents its family concert. There are two pieces on this concert: Nicole Buetti’s Spirits of Wind and Water Overture and Bill Elliott’s The Remarkable Farkle McBride (based on the book by John Lithgow) with narrator Suzanne Chimenti. Here’s what we had to say about this concert in October:

But it’s the December “Family Concert” that really caught our attention. It’s not just that they’re playing a remarkable piece of music-and-storytelling, though that would be impressive enough. They’re also playing music by an Oregon composer, Nicole Buetti.

Storytelling first. Way back in the antediluvian Early Aughts (the year 2000 to be precise) the actor John Lithgow–known for exceedingly memorable performances in The World According to Garp, Twilight Zone: The Movie, The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the 8th Dimension, Harry and the Hendersons, and the television series Third Rock from the Sun–surprised exactly nobody by releasing a children’s book about a child music prodigy, The Remarkable Farkle McBride. There was an accompanying album of kids’ songs, a proposed collaboration with Waylon Jennings, it was a whole thing.

Anyways, that led to swing musician Bill Elliott, one of Hollywood’s many relatively unsung yeopersons, composing a symphonic suite out of Farkle. Here’s the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra performing that earlier this year:

WFS will perform it in December with the orchestra’s president, Suzanne Chimenti, in the narrator role.

You’ve heard all about Oregon composer and contrabassoonist Buetti at ArtsWatch, dear reader: You can read about her Odyssey Overture here and here; read about her work with puppets and children’s songs here; and read about her “elegy for viola and orchestra,” Quasar, right here. Another of Hollywood’s (former) yeopersons, Buetti made her home in the PNW some years ago and has been delighting Oregon audiences ever since.

WFS will perform her recent Spirit of the Wind and Water, premiered just earlier this year by another orchestra we mentioned earlier–the Gorge Sinfonietta. Watch and listen right here:

The day after Christmas (Dec. 26, unless you’re Orthodox) brings Portland Youth Philharmonic back to The Schnitz for their “Concert-at-Christmas: Out of this World.” They’ll perform a bit of Tchaikovsky (Marche Slave), a bit of Williams (E.T.), and a world premiere by PYP’s Youth Wind Ensemble conductor, Giancarlo Castro D’Addona.

Lastly, we have two concerts featuring Oregonian conductor-composer Jonathan DeBruyn. On Dec. 14 & 15 he’ll lead the Salem Philharmonia Orchestra’s family concert, featuring music by his father Randall (Concertino for Chamber Orchestra and Percussion – Interlude) alongside such popular favorites as Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, Bernstein’s “Candide Overture,” Brahms’ “Hungarian Dance No. 5,” selections from Grieg’s Holberg Suite and Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake Suite, and more.

The preceding week–this weekend, in fact, Dec. 8–DeBruyn will conduct his own Symphony “Emmanuel” with the Sunnyside Symphony Orchestra. “Emmanuel” is of course one of Christ’s many nicknames; it means “God with us” and can refer either to God being on our side or God being literally among us in the sense explained in Matthew 25:31-46, also known as “The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats,” the famous “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” sermon.

Now all of this is particularly special, even considered only on the basic musical level: a local conductor directing a local symphony in a performance of his own work, and it’s an overtly religious work, performed at a local church. You will never see Your Oregon Symphony do this.

Oh yeah, also on this weekend’s Sunnyside program: Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite.

And now let the wild rumpus start

The Portland Revels are now in their 30th year of making warm-hearted rumpuses for Oregon audiences. Here’s what they have to say about their midwinter traditions:

The Midwinter Revels is steeped in traditions of song, dance, poetry and performance. Here are a few traditions you’ll see almost every year. A Midwinter Revels performance usually includes a mummer’s play. This comic and usually anachronistic enactment of death and rebirth finds its roots in celebrations held throughout Europe to mark important stages in the agricultural year. In the Midwinter Revels, the mummer’s play is another demonstration of the Midwinter Revels central theme: the descent into darkness and the return of the light. In a mummer’s play a hero usually fights a villain (traditionally a dragon), is killed, and then resurrected by magic. A Revels mummers play will often include a sword dance.

Here’s what that looked like in their 2018 production Highland Dance:

This year’s midwinter production is called Norse Fire, and the story goes like this:

When Astrid discovers her Grandfather is close to death, she and the Norse God Jólnir set off on a journey through time and space to save him. But perhaps it isn’t Grandfather she needs to save. A tale told with the music, story, and dance of Northern Europe.

That’s about as far as you can get from Christian Christmas while still being very “God with us.” This one opens at Alberta Abbey on Dec. 13 and runs through the 22nd.

***

The 45|| “North Pole Cello Sextet” extends its Nutcracking into a third night with the Second Annual Mississippi Chamber Music Holiday Pub Crawl on Dec. 17. As with last year’s crawl (read Charles Rose’s report here), the shindig sprawls across North Portland’s Mississippi neighborhood, from Lisa Lipton’s “skinniest bar in Portland,” Mendelssohn’s, over to the reigning champion of the ever-shifting “best venue in Portland” war, Mississippi Studios, with various “TBD” stops in between. Get your puffy coat and your scarves ready now.

Sleigh bells ring

The PNW boasts a variety of handbell choirs, at least three of which remain active in Oregon (the infamous Ring of Fire of Tualatin Valley Academy disbanded in 2005). One of the original RoF members, Michael Blackburn, returned to TVA in 2015 and restarted the handbell program; Blackburn insists that “when the students in TVA Bells are able to play with Ring of Fire’s level of precision, musicality and performance, all by memory, they will take on the Ring of Fire name.” High hopes! 

You can follow progress at their various performances in various Seventh Day Adventist churches around the area (Forest Grove, Beaverton, Gladstone, etc.) and at their Christmas concert in the TVA gym on Dec. 19. Last year, that sounded like this:

Bells of the Cascades–an advanced, adult, community group–has been playing together for 35 years now. They’ll perform this year’s Christmas program, “Spirit of the Season,” twice: on the 21st in Vancouver and on the 22nd in Portland. They can also provide quintets of holiday bell ringers for private events, which you can read more about on their website:

What better way to ring in the season than with the actual ringing of bells?

We love to bring our music to your ears! We can perform in large settings or intimate venues. From retirement communities to outdoor festivals, restaurants to bank lobbies, churches to formal holiday parties, we can ring in the celebration!

Which brings us to Pacific Ringers, who perform four times this season. Three of those are their regular holiday concert, this year titled Tidings of Peace, which they’ll perform on Dec. 7 at Hope Village Retirement Community in Canby; on December 8 at Grant Park Church in Portland; and on December 14 at Murray Hills Christian Church in Beaverton.

Pacific Ringers will also join Pacific Youth Choir on December 15 for their Wintertide Awakes concert at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Northwest Portland.

And auld lang syne

We leave you with a handful of New Year’s concerts, most of which don’t happen on Dec. 31, which is just as well–you’d rather be at home that night anyways, wouldn’t you?

First up is Portland Chamber Orchestra’s “New Year’s Mixology Party,” featuring newly appointed artistic director Deanna Tham and everybody’s favorite singing flutist, Zach Galatis. They’ll perform a bit of Bach, a bit of Debussy, a bit of Stravinsky, plus Carl Reinecke’s Flute Concerto and selections from Bernstein’s West Side Story. Here’s Galatis singing “Maria” with 45|| a couple years back:

***

Next up is Fireside Social Orchestra, a subset of Phil and Gayle Neuman’s intensely HIP Oregon Renaissance Band. They describe themselves like this:

Recreating the small orchestra featured in parlour and ballroom performances of long ago with instruments including violin, tenor viola, cello, flageolets, walking stick recorder, flute, serpent, ophicleide, ballad horn, alto saxhorn, tenor horn, tuba, banjo, guitar, piano, reed contrabass, ocarinas, alphorns, autoharp, bagpipes, voices and more.

The Fireside Social Orchestra’s large repertoire includes quadrilles from “Foster’s Social Orchestra” published by Stephen Foster in 1854, music from the Aurora Colony (established in 1856) and other music from Old Oregon, songs with lyrics by early Oregon author/suffragists Abigail Scott Duniway and Eva Emery Dye, fiddle tunes from Ireland, England and America, shape-note songs from The Sacred Harp (1844), Christmas Carols in their original forms, early ragtime music, marches, light classical music, early American political songs and much more.

And they look like this:

FSO performs their “Celtic New Year” twice this season: on Dec. 28 at the Community Music Center in Southeast Portland (the one that looks like a repurposed fire station, because it is); and on Dec. 29 in the Pioneer Church at Baker Cabin in Oregon City, where that lovely old-timey photo above was taken.

***

And so we end back where we started, with the Oregon Symphony. Their New Year’s concert happens on Dec. 30 at their usual haunt, The Schnitz of Yore, and it’s their usual New Year’s program: Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the National Anthem of the West. The cast includes soloists Mary Evelyn Hangley (soprano), Julie Miller (mezzo-soprano), Sean Panikkar (tenor), Kevin Deas (bass-baritone); members of Oregon Repertory Singers and Portland State University Chamber Choir; alumni of Pacific Youth Choir; conductor David Danzmayr; Your Oregon Symphony; all the balloons.

This one they probably won’t mind if you sing along to.