The Monmouth Civic Chorus
Dr. Mark Shapiro, Artistic Director
Close to Perfect, Close to Home

Messiah and More

The Christmas Portion
with soloists and chamber orchestra
It won't be Christmas without it!

Holiday favorites will add to the joy of the season.
Sunday, Dec. 18, 2011, 4:00 pm
at the Count Basie Theatre, Red Bank NJ

A Note from the Conductor

My final holiday concert as Music Director of the Monmouth Civic Chorus is a distinctly emotional experience. Counting this evening's performance, MCC and I will have celebrated this season together twenty-one times. Over the years our joint understanding of its meaning has only grown richer.

At the beginning of winter we seem always to experience a heightened awareness of the passage of time. We have changed our clocks; now we bundle up and put the kettle on, bracing ourselves for the shortness of the days, the chill of frosty nights. The early afternoon dark makes us keenly mindful of time's recurring cycle: it is "that time of year" again. (And again the ritual crossing of fingers: no snowstorm, please, on the day of our concert.) Stoically enduring the shortness of the days, we await the arrival of a new spring.

As humans have throughout history, we brighten the season with light, and with music. We counter its inherent gloom by making it festive, decorating it with color and sound. Time spent indoors – at the hearth, or whatever nowadays passes for a hearth – strengthens our ties to friends and family, the irreplaceable precious ones whose spirits are our constant inner companions.

This is why, as much as anyone, I love the holiday favorites: Christmas carols, Hanukah songs, new arrangements of old tunes and texts. Singing will always grace our lives for as long as people have voices, and I cannot imagine what someone could invent to outdo the magnificence of actual human voices raised together in song. As every singer well understands, the experience is mythic, transcendent. It goes deeper than we can say, reaching us at that pre-conscious level of soul where we sense only the necessity and rightness of what we’re doing.

Nor do I ever tire of Handel’s Messiah. Whenever it is on the program, I cannot wait to hear the first chords. I know I will be immediately and completely won over by the music’s radiant beauty, its expressive range, its effortless technique, and its ineffable rightness for the voices and instruments.

My two decades with the Monmouth Civic Chorus have been a life-changing experience. I am so humbled and grateful to have had the opportunity to learn from this organization, these singers. MCC taught me much of what I know about life; this has been a gift that I can never adequately repay. I hope listeners will join us for my “farewell” concert: Verdi’s Requiem on March 10, 2012. That will be a powerful night of celebration and reflection, and as Verdi’s masterpiece always is, a profoundly exhilarating musical experience.

~ Mark Shapiro