Harmonium Choral Society will perform The Presbyterian Church in Morristown, Dec. 13-14.
If you are wondering what to meditate on this holiday season, Harmonium Choral Society has an idea. Its holiday concert, “Season of Blessings,” will feature works that are meant to highlight all the blessings in our lives and remind us that they can be found everywhere.
Repertoire will span from Baroque to bluegrass, with backing by a chamber orchestra, Dec. 13-14 at The Presbyterian Church in Morristown.
Artistic director Anne Matlack comes up with a theme every December that explores the holiday spirit of togetherness and hope, or simply muses on wintertime motifs.
“My holiday programs are really eclectic because I like to cover a lot of ground, and then I try to put that around a theme that’s maybe bigger than what you’d expect to hear with typical Christmas music,” she says. “I actually find the December concert theme the hardest to come up with because I want it to both be Decembery and overarching.”
Peter de Mets, left, and Mark A. Boyle.
The concert’s cornerstone is “Blessings” (2009) by Peter de Mets, featuring texts by lifelong collaborator Mark A. Boyle. The two wrote the work after being inspired by the parting words of a fellow composer who said that his father taught him to “look for blessings every day,” and then called de Mets and Boyle his blessings.
The piece asks listeners to search for blessings in the streets, churches, synagogues, mosques and “in the heart of humankind.”
“The message encompasses the whole audience,” says Matlack. “It’s not saying ‘Go to church,’ but rather to look everywhere for your blessings, and then think about them to find ‘sacred joy.’ I always get chills at the end because the text says, ‘You are my blessings,’ and it makes me think about the audience and my choir: They are the blessing that we can make this all come together, and I think that message is so beautiful.”
Harmonium’s holiday concerts usually begin with the choir coming out into the audience and standing around them, singing. Then they process to the front and continue to sing. Matlack calls it a “surround-sound chorus” — an effect that deepens the connections between the audience and the singers. Concertgoers also get to experience the sheer energy and excitement of 100 voices singing in unison.
“That’s one of the big reasons to come out for live music,” she says. “As much as we’ve been trying to capture the surround-sound experience on video, you really can’t feel what it’s like to be sitting in the middle of that. That’s also a reason why you don’t want to be late to our concerts — because it’s usually the first piece!”
Surround-sound will be used for Tawnie Olson’s uplifting Christmas oration “O Inexpressible Mystery” set to text by Gregory of Nazianzus, a fourth century theologian. “It’s basically a cappella chorus with a long-humming opening and the music is carried by a haunting viola solo,” she says.
ANNE MATLACK
Matlack discovered the piece last year and immediately thought of violist Kimberly Love. “I said to her, ‘Hey, we have to do this piece together some time — let’s make it happen soon!’ ”
Some Harmonium members, including Love, are professional musicians who double as instrumentalists at concerts.
“A great thing about a group like Harmonium is that we have talented people who get up and take leadership positions,” says Matlack. “Love used to be one of those people who would pull out her instrument and play for free, but there is a lot of instrumental accompaniment in this particular program so I was able to hire her, which is really exciting because she’s both a pro musician and a member of the Harmonium family.”
The two have known each other since Love was in elementary school and sang in the choir at Grace Church in Madison, where Matlack is the longtime director of choirs and organist.
Love will also play a viola solo in “Estampie Natalis” (1975), a choral piece by Vaclav Nelhybel that will show off the choir’s dynamic and expressive range. The work (which Matlack calls “a neglected gem”) combines sacred melodies with exuberant rhythms, creating a modern take on medieval dance music. Cellist Michael Holak — who is also a member of the choir along with his wife, Jennifer — also features in the piece.
He will play the evocative solo that opens Andrea Clearfield’s “Prayer to the Shechinah,” a work of hymn-like passages and propulsive rhythms, set to poetry by Mirabai Starr that explores the faith and femininity of the Shechinah, the feminine face of God.
It premiered in 2020 with a Texas choral ensemble called Conspirare, “but with the pandemic, it didn’t get a lot of consecutive performances and it wasn’t able to grow legs,” says Matlack. This will be its East Coast premiere.
Clearfield will be in attendance along with a couple of other composers on the program, too. Matlack likes to reach out and let them know their works will be performed. “If they’re local, oftentimes they will come, and it’s really special on both ends: We can meet the composer and they can hear their piece being sung.”
Harmonium, based in Morristown, was formed in 1979. It is multigenerational and singers come from all backgrounds. Many are church musicians, music teachers and avocational musicians. There are also lawyers, engineers, and tech and medical professionals.
An audition process allows them to pull soloists from their own ranks; they don’t have to pay outside vocal soloists to come sing. The result is a very personalized community.
The Harmonium Chamber Singers, a smaller group of about 25, sing a small set at each concert and give their own performance in May. They will sing four works at the holiday concert, including “Jubilate Deo” by Renaissance composer Orlando di Lasso, a short and cheerful 16th century motet based on Psalm 100; and the U.S. premiere of “A Wild Midwinter Carol” a folk-like secular carol by Liz Dilnot Johnson that describes woodland creatures during a British winter solstice.
LAUREL LUKE CHRISTENSEN
“And I Said to the Star” was written by Harmonium’s emerging-composer-in-residence, Laurel Luke Christensen, 37, who began seriously pursuing composition seven years ago. “We call her role ‘emerging’ because Laurel is someone who is kind of at the beginning of their composition career, although she’s really taken off,” says Matlack.
(Harmonium’s longstanding composer-in-residence is Mark Andrew Miller, a professor of church music at Drew Theological School in Madison and minister of music at Christ Church in Summit. His works will be heard on Harmonium programs in March and June.)
The Chamber Singers will also sing Cynthia Shaw’s “Rich Man” inspired by mentors who shaped her musical language, including Alice Parker, founder of the choral organization Melodious Accord.
Parker’s arrangement of “Il Est Né,” a traditional French Christmas carol, will also be sung. French language selections have a special significance this year: Harmonium will tour France in the summer, so they are polishing their French language skills and trying out works for the program.
Another French selection is “Bénissez-Nous” from the traditional Sephardic song “Bendigamos” by David Lévi Alvarès, sung in a modern arrangement in French and Hebrew by Stephen Cohen. They last performed it in 2006, but it has since been revised.
Matlack enjoys pairing similar yet contrasting works and will do so with two different takes on the traditional “Gloria” hymn, starting with the Baroque-era “Gloria/Et in terra pax” section from J.S. Bach’s choral masterpiece Mass in B Minor. John Girvin on organ has figured out a way to play the trumpet’s famous fanfare; the chamber ensemble doesn’t include the brass instrument.
GRACE COPELAND
From left, Ezra Seltzer, Jeffrey Grossman, Daniel S. Lee and Nicholas DiEugenio of The Sebastians.
The Bach inclusion is a preview, of sorts. In April, about two-thirds of Harmonium will join the Music in the Somerset Hills chorus for a full performance at St. Mary’s Abbey in Morristown featuring The Sebastians, an early-music period ensemble from New York.
“I thought it would be a good idea to get a head start by excerpting the ‘Gloria’ movement because that is sort of the most Christmasy one with the angels saying ‘Glory to God in the highest,’ ” says Matlack.
It will be contrasted with the “Gloria” movement from The World Beloved: A Bluegrass Mass by Carol Barnett, scored for chorus and bluegrass band. It will feature Rick Merino on banjo, Wayne Fugate on mandolin and Max Calbick on guitar.
Of course there will be early sacred music, including “Hodie Christus natus est” by Giovanni da Palestrina, a Renaissance composer chosen by Matlack in commemoration of his 500th anniversary of his birth.
She is also excited for audiences to hear the Christmas gradual “Alleluia, Angelus Domini” by José M. Nunes Garcia, an 18th century Brazilian composer who was ordained a priest, and wrote in the classical style of Mozart and Haydn.
“The piece was published recently in a wonderful book called ‘The Oxford Book of Choral Music by Black Composers,’ and then we found the full score version that has flutes, cello, organ and two French horns, so you’ll actually hear the way the piece was scored,” says Matlack.
Matlack is also big on choreographed works, which she jokingly refers to as “choral-ography.”
Troy D. Robertson’s “In Meeting We Are Blessed” processional was choreographed by Harmonium singer PJ Livesey, who will also conduct. The piece was written for a meeting between an American choir and one from Nairobi. The text calls for unity and friendship, and rhythms were inspired by West African drumming. There will be lots of movement so the choir will sing it “off-book,” which means the text is memorized and scores are put aside.
“Most choral societies don’t memorize their music, but I try to have at least one piece in a concert where we’re off-book because it’s really just a different experience,” says Matlack. In March, Harmonium performed off-book to “Ain’t No Grave Can Hold My Body Down,” a 20th century American gospel song, which they choreographed with ASL movements. (watch video below)
The concert will wrap with Craig Courtney’s humorous “A Musicological Journey Through the Twelve Days of Christmas,” an entertaining discovery piece that lampoons the traditional English carol.
Each movement is composed in a different style of musical history. For example, “A partridge in a pear tree” is from sixth century Rome and sounds like Gregorian chant; and “Two turtle doves” is from 15th century France and sounds like medieval music. As they sing, the choir will do little movements, choreographed by Beth Wilson.
ANNE MATLACK
Matlack joined Harmonium in 1987. “We were a small group of about 40 singers and we rehearsed in Chester,” she says. “We did two concerts a year: winter and spring. Then we started to grow and went to a subscription series, adding a March concert to the middle, and we just kept growing.”
She programs four concerts per season, each one with a theme encompassing an array of cultures, composers, styles and languages. The 2025-26 season, called “A Choral Tapestry of Spirit, Struggle, and Celebration,” will explore “sacred heritage, cultural resilience and the power of song to connect us across time and belief.”
Harmonium frequently collaborates with other Morris County choirs, including Music in the Somerset Hills, Masterwork Chorus and Morris Choral Society. In January, the Chamber Singers will join The Discovery Orchestra for a collaborative concert that will celebrate New Jersey composers.
“There’s a lot of wonderful choruses in Morris County so everybody tries to support each other,” she says.
What differentiates her choir from theirs?
“Challenging repertoire and a cappella,” she says. “We are 100 voices and some people think, ‘Oh, that’s like a symphonic chorus,’ but we are actually not that. We are 100 voices who dare to sing a lot of a cappella music and a lot of different styles.
“I’ve developed a sound that I like, and I would like to say that it’s a flexible sound, and pretty bright and blended. But when I want it to be darker, we can do that. If you have an all-pro choir, you can get a perfect sound, maybe. But when you have a community choir, everyone is there for the love of it.”
Harmonium Choral Society will perform at The Presbyterian Church of Morristown, Dec. 13 at 7:30 p.m. and Dec. 14 at 3 p.m. Under its new ticket pricing policy, students will pay $5 and there will be no admission charge for children 12 and younger. At both concerts, non-perishable food items will be accepted, for donation to Table of Hope, a nonprofit organization that helps families in need in Morris County. Visit harmonium.org.
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