Burning Bright Candlelight Christmas Concert Features Brass Classics, Along With A Shining New Soprano

FOR THE RECORD: 12-27-00 Wrong position: Charles Bradley, artistic director for The Cathedral and The Arts series, is the organist at Central United Methodist Church. His position was reported incorrectly in a story in last Thursday’s IN Life section.

There are plenty of reasons not to miss this year’s Candlelight Christmas Concert at St. John’s Cathedral.

Since 1992, Spokane’s Clarion Brass Choir and its music director, William Berry, have filled the beautiful church at holiday time with new arrangements of traditional carols. Often, as this year, the concert features an up-and-coming musician from our area.

This is always a popular concert, says Berry, “because brass and Christmas just go together.” Also, audiences can say that they “heard it here first,” since the musicians each year play arrangements Berry has written specially for this concert.

It used to be you’d hear Berry’s carol arrangements only at the cathedral. But Clarion, comprised of a dozen brass and percussion players from the Spokane Symphony, has collected the fruits of past concerts on a new CD called “Nutcracker Suite Dreams.” It’s available at the cathedral gift shop as well as at selected area music and bookstores.

Berry, a Spokane Symphony trumpet player, passed along a copy of the CD to the Canadian Brass when the ensemble performed at a symphony pops concert in September. After listening to it, they requested six of Berry’s arrangements for their Christmas concert with the New York Philharmonic this past Sunday in Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center.

Berry traveled to New York City for what must have been a “suite” experience: to hear the concert and give tips on playing his compositions to some of the world’s best-known brass players.

This year’s Candlelight Christmas Concert will offer new arrangements by Berry and revisit now-famous pieces from past years.

The Clarion Brass Choir, conducted by Gonzaga University music professor Robert Spittal, will be joined by symphony keyboard player Linda Siverts; St. John’s organist Charles Bradley, the artistic director for The Cathedral and The Arts; and members of the Spokane Area Children’s Chorus, directed by Tamara Schupman.

The concert’s featured young artist is soprano Elizabeth Delaney, a Washington State University senior double-majoring in voice and flute.

Delaney was last year’s winner of the Washington Idaho Symphony Young Artist competition.

Berry has arranged three pieces for Delaney and the Clarion Brass: “The Icey December,” a Catalonian carol; an 18th-century American carol, “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree,” and “Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow.”

Children’s Chorus members, with brass accompaniment, will perform Berry’s arrangements of “O Sanctissima,” “Go Tell it on the Mountain” and “The Wassail Song.” Bradley will perform “Lotus Blossom” by Duke Ellington’s collaborator, Billy Strayhorn. And Siverts will play “December,” from Tchaikovsky’s “The Seasons.”

Berry’s “Nutcracker Suite Dreams” tosses seven of Tchaikovsky’s ballet movements into jazz, blues, Latin and even Bulgarian Cossack rhythms. That and three other arrangements from the CD are the Brass Choir’s pieces on the program.

They’ll be supplemented by one more new one: a polyrhythmic arrangement of a Cornish tune called “Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day” that’s so wacky Berry’s wife calls it “a mind dance for cow and three-legged goat.”

Not to be missed, indeed.

This sidebar appeared with the story: Preview Candlelight Christmas Concert

Presented by The Cathedral and The Arts, Friday, 8 p.m., and Saturday, 3 and 8 p.m., at St. John’s Cathedral, 12th and Grand. Tickets: $14/adults, $12/seniors, $7/children under 12, through G&B (325-SEAT, 1-800-325-SEAT or www.ticketswest.com).