Festival of Carols/ Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, Jean-Sébastien Vallée, conductor; Jonathan Oldengarm, organ; Irene Gregorio, piano. Dec. 3 & 4, 2024 7:30 p.m. Yorkminster Park Baptist Church, 1585 Yonge Street, Toronto. Repeats Dec 4; tickets here.
For the last 25 years, the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir has been bringing the joy of communal Carol Sing to its Toronto audience. The sole exception was in 2020 and 2021 when the in-person event was cancelled due to the pandemic. It resumed last year and let’s hope the tradition will continue uninterrupted in the future.
It’s an event that I look forward to every December. I was there last evening on a media assignment, but if truth be told, how does one review a carol singing event anyway? I decided to just hang up my critic’s hat, forget about taking notes, and just be an audience member, partaking in the joyous occasion.
It was the first of two performances at the Yorkminster Park Baptist Church. It’s a huge venue, with a seating capacity of over 1,200 in the main sanctuary and the galleries. The turnout last evening, while not completely full, was gratifyingly large. Given the slow running subway in the downtown core these days, I decided to get there 45 minutes early. There were already lots of people jammed into the vestibule, waiting to be let in.
The concert was led by the esteemed TMC choral conductor Jean-Sébastien Vallée, in a six section, 90-minute program of age-old chestnuts and contemporary works, including a TMC-commissioned world premiere. As church acoustics goes, the Yorkminster Park is wonderful. When the sound comes from a world-class ensemble that is the TMC, it’s truly thrilling. There were moments last evening when I felt the sound in the depth of my being.
As TMC resident musicologist Rena Roussin writes in her program notes, the evening combines traditional pieces the likes of “Silent Night” and “Joy to the World” with seven recently composed works, plus “Worthy is the Lamb” from Handel’s Messiah, for a total of 16 pieces. It lasted 90 minutes, a tad short for opera fans like yours truly, who are accustomed to multiple-hour operatic marathons. Well, even more reason to savour every moment!
This year’s world premiere/TMC Commission was Aaron Manswell’s “Good News,” a piece that “fuses Bach’s ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’ with his compositional influences from Gospel and R&B.” It proved to be a beautiful and totally accessible work that I hope to hear again. Kudos to organist Jonathan Oldengarm, who contributed greatly to the sonic journey.
The evening ended joyously with an encore! And what better encore than the thrilling rendition of the Hallelujah Chorus from Messiah? I dare say everyone went home happy. If you can make it, do attend the second performance this evening. If not, hopefully the performance will be uploaded to TMC’s YouTube channel as in previous years here.
On that note, I wish all Ludwig van Toronto readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy 2025.
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