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11.21.05

For immediate release: Monday, November 21, 2005
Contact: Nancy Condon, 404.727.6687, nancy.condon@emory.edu

EMORY CELEBRATES THE SEASON WITH THREE FESTIVE HOLIDAY CONCERTS

This December, Emory presents three holiday concerts that have become Emory and Atlanta holiday traditions. The “Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols,” performed by the Emory University Chorus and Concert Choir and conducted by Eric Nelson, begins this musical season with its candlelit evening service of choral music and scripture on Dec. 9 at 8 p.m. and Dec. 10 at 5 and 8 p.m. in Glenn Memorial Auditorium ($15; discount category members $12; Emory students $5). Based on the 12th-century Christmas service at King’s College Chapel in Cambridge, England, the festival has been an Atlanta tradition since 1935. Next, the Emerson Chamber Music Society of Atlanta (ECMSA) and the Vega String Quartet perform music of the season for children and families at the ECMSA “Annual Holiday Concert and Sing-Along” in Emory’s Michael C. Carlos Museum on Dec. 11 at 4 p.m. ($4; free to museum members at the family level or above). Finally, pagan meets St. Patrick and the Celtic world meets Appalachia at the thirteenth annual “Atlanta Celtic Christmas Concert,” Dec. 17 and 18 at 8 p.m. in Emory’s Schwartz Center for Performing Arts ($25; discount category members, $20; students and children, $10). This year, Grammy Award-winning banjo virtuoso Alison Brown and “Riverdance” composer Bill Whelan join top regional performers in the show. For tickets and information, call 404-727-5050 or go to www.arts.emory.edu.

The Atlanta tradition of the “Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols” grew out of Christmas concerts first performed at Atlanta’s First Presbyterian Church in 1925. The annual event moved to Glenn Memorial Church upon its completion in 1931. The current format of “Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols” was adopted in 1935 and has met widespread popular and critical acclaim ever since. The festival is filled with traditions such as the opening candlelight procession of the choir—numbering approximately 220 singers, the largest in the festival’s history—singing "Once in Royal David’s City" and the closing singing of "Silent Night." This year, the festival also includes such well known carols as "Ding Dong Merrily on High” and the stunningly beautiful new work "Lux Arumque” by American composer Eric Whitacre, and features University organist Timothy Albrecht playing the audience favorite "Bring a Torch, Jeanette Isabella."

In the eleventh “Annual Holiday Concert and Sing-Along,” ECMSA artistic director and Emory’s Mary Emerson Professor of Piano Director of Piano Studies Will Ransom and special guests the Vega String Quartet perform “Winter” from Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” selections from “The Nutcracker Suite,” and Christmas carols arranged for string quartet. Conductor Richard Prior will also lead a sing-along of holiday favorites. The award-winning Vega, Atlanta’s first-ever resident string quartet, consists of the brilliant new violinist, Wei-Wei Le, a protegée of the late Sir Yehudi Menuhin; Jessica Shuang Wu, violin; Yinzi Kong, viola; and Guang Wang, cello. The concert takes place in the reception hall on level three of the Carlos Museum.

The “Atlanta Celtic Christmas Concert,” produced by Emory's W.B. Yeats Foundation under the direction of Winship Professor of the Arts and Humanities James Flannery, who is also the concert’s host, has been called by the Atlanta Journal Constitution "a rollicking yet reverend occasion.” The concert celebrates in music, dance, poetry, song and story the Christmas traditions of the Celtic lands and their connections with many similar traditions in the American South. In addition to Alison Brown and Bill Whelan, this year’s concert also features musicians and dancers representing the Highland Scots tradition of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, as well as a number of the top traditional performers of the Southeast, including Irish tenor and storyteller James Flannery, the Buddy O’Reilly Band, fiddler Maggie Holtzberg, singer Barbara Panter, Welsh harper Kelly Stewart, the four-part harmony of Nonesuch, Highland pipers and dancers, Irish step dancers and Appalachian clog dancers. A concert highlight is the premiere of "Quis Est Deus" (“Who is God?”), a choral setting by Bill Whelan of a seventh-century Irish prayer-poem in which a fairy child questions St. Patrick on the meaning of the Christian God he is bringing to Ireland. "Quis Est Deus" will be performed by the Emory Early Music Ensemble under the direction of Jody Miller, with a counter-tenor solo by Khaemille Parham.

 Arts at Emory

Emory is home to a vibrant arts community and welcomes the public to more than 200 events annually featuring guest, faculty, alumni and student artists. More than 20 exhibitions and 80 concerts are presented each year. The work of internationally-known artists is featured in exhibitions at the Michael C. Carlos Museum, Schatten Gallery, and Visual Arts Building and Gallery; in performances of the Flora Glenn Candler Concert Series; in new play development through the Playwriting Center of Theater Emory and Brave New Works Series; in readings for the creative writing program reading series; and through residencies in the Emory Coca-Cola Artists-in-Residence Series. Emory is home to 14 professional and student music ensembles, including Emory Dance Company and Theater Emory. The Schwartz Center for Performing Arts, one of six performance venues on campus, opened in February 2003 and houses the Dance Studio, Theater Laboratory, and the 825-seat, state-of-the-art Cherry Logan Emerson Concert Hall. For more information on the arts at Emory, call 404-727-5050.

Mission of the Arts at Emory: Emory University provides a dynamic, innovative environment for the study, creation and presentation of the arts.

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