LIMA —A popular holiday show is set to make its return to Veterans Memorial Civic Center and all parties involved seem to be excited.
“Bells, Brass & Bows,” the Lima Symphony Orchestra’s annual holiday performance will take the stage at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and will feature a diverse array of arrangements performed by the orchestra and the Lima Symphony Chorus.
“It’s just a wonderful celebration of the holiday spirit,” said LSO Executive Director Elizabeth Brown-Ellis. “And we always make sure to program some really joyous, festive holiday favorites that people are familiar with, traditional songs. We also do a lot of sacred music. And so there will certainly be ‘Ave Maria’ and some music that people will definitely recognize liturgical settings. And then there’s just lots of good Christmas carols.”
Brown-Ellis credits Music Director Andrew Crust with introducing some of the new features that the audience will be able to expect this Saturday.
“Maestro Crust is really changing the programming and so we still have all the traditions that people have come to love,” she said. “The chorus, of course, will join us and there will be things that people expect to look forward to every year. But he’s adding a new take on it. I think every season, every concert becomes a little different, a little more his own. One of the things that we are doing this year, that might seem a little different is the ‘Nutcracker Suite,’ but we’re doing the arrangement of Duke Ellington. And so it’s much more jazzy than the traditional Tchaikovsky version.”
Crust said that, since the show is designed to be enjoyable for all ages, it should be entertaining.
“Overall, we have a lot of entertainment in the show,” he said. “We’ve got the more serious and traditional side of Christmas shows with music like ‘Ave Maria,’ music like ‘Men of Goodwill’ and ‘Christmas Overture’ of Coleridge-Taylor, but overall it’s just going to be a lot of fun. We also have our Assistant Concertmaster Anita Chiu is going to be playing excerpts from Vivaldi’s ‘Winter’ from ‘The Four Seasons,’ which is also a seasonal favorite. So really, it’s just entertaining for everybody to get a little bit of chorus, get a little bit of jazz and a little bit of traditional.”
The orchestra will be accompanied for much of the night by the Lima Symphony Chorus on pieces like “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and John Williams’ theme from “Home Alone,” “Somewhere in my Memory,” conducted by Mark Suderman, who had high praise for Crust.
“We probably sing about half the numbers maybe a little over half the numbers for the concert,” he said. “And I’ll say too we are excited about working with Andrew Crust again. He is a wonderful conductor. He’s worked with us once before with the chorus once before last spring in a concert. He is a wonderful young conductor and we are just thrilled to be able to sing for him.”
Although both the chorus and orchestra performers have been rehearsing on their time prior to their final two in-person practices altogether, the work going into the performance is sure to pay off.
“Well, musicians are the busiest people of all during the holiday season,” said Crust. “So they’ve been playing all around the state and actually the region in a lot of different Christmas programming, but this is, I think, the most exciting program in the area, because of the variety. And the musicians, they come prepared to the first rehearsal. But of course, there’s a lot of work to do in that rehearsal, but the big work is really coordinating the chorus. Our volunteer chorus has been working every week for a couple of months now to prepare this music to coordinate the chorus along with the orchestra and put it all together in one great show.”
IF YOU GO
WHAT: Lima Symphony Orchestra’s “Bells, Brass & Bows”
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Saturday
WHERE: Veterans Memorial Civic Center, 7 Town Square, Lima
Tickets can be purchased online at http://www.limasymphony.com. Prices and availability are listed online.
Reach Jacob Espinosa at 567-242-0399.
