Again, Candlelight Concert Simply A Joy

Candlelight Christmas Concert Friday, Dec. 22, St. John’s Cathedral

Nobody can liven up a traditional tune like a brass ensemble. And no tune is better suited to the occasional nontraditional livening-up than a Christmas carol.

The Clarion Brass Choir - made up of Spokane Symphony musicians, with music director and arranger William Berry and conductor Robert Spittal - has proved this for years in the annual “Candlelight Christmas Concert” at the Cathedral of St.

John. They did it again this year, to sold-out crowds in three concerts Friday and Saturday.

There was no shortage of tradition in the program. Wind instruments, festive music and churches have belonged together since Giovanni Gabrieli first wrote music for choirs of trombones and cornets to perform from the balconies of Saint Mark’s in Venice.

“Drummer,” the Clarion’s version of “Little Drummer Boy,” evoked Venetian polychoral brass sound with pairs of trumpets - Berry and Andrew Plamondon, Christopher Cook and Larry Jess - at opposite ends of the Cathedral. Remaining Clarion members, consisting of four horns, three trombones, tuba and percussion, sat as a third choir at the center of the church. The effect was a ringing, rich, “surround sound.”

It’s a Clarion tradition to program all new arrangements each year for the “Candlelight” concert. This year, they reprogrammed some favorites from past years, along with new arrangements by Berry for brass choir and vocalists.

Sixteen members of the Spokane Area Children’s Chorus joined the brass for three beautiful pieces from different traditions. Their “O Sanctissima” was a reverent rendition of a 16th-century Latin hymn.

Spokane Symphony pianist Linda Siverts and Clarion horn players Charles Karschney, Roger Logan, Reid Smith and Margaret Wilds, accompanied the Children’s Chorus singers in the Yorkshire carol, “Wassail Song.”

The kids’ last piece was a swinging version of “Go Tell It on the Mountain.” All three of Berry’s arrangements stayed true to their originals, though the “Wassail Song” is so complicated that it seemed once or twice to almost come apart on Friday night.

The children’s sweet singing was matched by that of soprano Elizabeth Delaney, a student of Julie Wieck at Washington State University who has several opera roles and the Washington-Idaho Symphony’s Young Artist prize already to her credit. Her voice does not yet have all the strength of a mature singer’s, but she makes up for it in clarity and range.

Berry wrote three pieces for her: a Catalonian carol, “Icey December,” an American carol, “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree,” and “Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow,” which is a particularly gorgeous piece. There were other gems on the program: brass arrangements of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” “Il est ne, le divin Enfant” and “Tomorrow Shall be My Dancing Day”; Siverts’ performance of Tchaikovsky’s “December,” and organist Charles Bradley doing Billy Strayhorn’s arrangement of “Lotus Blossom,” with Berry playing along.

But if this concert were about tradition and the nontraditional, then its centerpieces were two collections of tunes from past years’ concerts, now recorded on the Clarion’s first CD. “Nutcracker Suite Dreams” and “Festival of Lights - A Collection for Chanukah” show Berry as arranger and the talented Clarion musicians all at their best - virtuosic, musically fascinating and wildly fun. “Nutcracker” features Plamondon’s fabulous technique and improvisation, tuba player Leonard Byrne’s nimble rendition of the “Chinese Dance,” and some pretty drunk-sounding trombones. Berry’s klezmer version of five traditional Chanukah songs got children of all ages in the audience tapping and bouncing for joy.

Let’s hope the Clarion’s “Candlelight Concert” has a long tradition still to come.