Vespers Concert Continues a Long Tradition

Glee Club member Alahna Roach '00 designed and created this woodcut illustration for Christmas vespers. It was inspired by the concert's closing number, the holiday carol "Some Children See Him," which describes how the world's children may picture the baby Jesus differently but celebrate his birth together.

Christmas traditionally comes early to Mount Holyoke. On December 7, more than 180 students and faculty will participate in the annual Christmas vespers, a concert tradition now almost a century old. Performing will be the College's Glee Club, Chamber Singers, and Concert Choir, directed by Catharine Melhorn and Christopher Aspaas. The student-led gospel choir Voices of Faith and the English Handbell Choir will also perform. College organist Larry Schipull, pianists Mark Gionfriddo and Anjali DeSilva '00, trumpeter Jason Adams, harpist Felice Swados, and oboist Tamara Field will also be featured.

In addition to familiar congregational carols and the much-beloved candlelight Gregorian chant processional, the concert will include an Italian Baroque trumpet sonata, a new work--the "Canticle of Mary"--by Minnesota composer Libby Larsen, the spiritual "Go Tell It On the Mountain," a Swedish carol, a suite of Spanish folk songs, and movements from Britten's much-admired "Ceremony of Carols." The combined choirs will close the program with the premiere of Mark Gionfriddo's new arrangement of jazz musician Alfred Burt's carol "Some Children See Him." It describes how the world's children may picture the baby Jesus differently--with skin color, hair, and eyes like their own--yet all rejoice that "'Tis love that's born tonight."

Seating in Abbey Chapel is limited for these popular concerts; doors open thirty-five minutes before the 4:00 and 7:30 pm performances.

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