Things to Do in NYC: Holiday Music Concerts
By Troy Segal
There’s still time to raise your voice in song (or just listen, if your sense of pitch is shaky) with these upcoming holiday musical events in New York City. Whether your taste runs to the religious or to the jazzy, there’s a performance for you.
A Charlie Brown Christmas turns 50 this year. A screening of the whimsical cartoon classic is accompanied by a live trio, doing those ever-fresh Vince Guaraldi arrangements, and a choir—and all can raise their voices in some carols, just like the Peanuts gang does, afterwards. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dec. 20 & 21.
What will Santa Claus say, when he finds everybody swinging? That question (as bandleader Louis Prima famously sang) is answered in spades at the Big Band Holidays concert, performed by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra; led by Wynton Marsalis, it serves up syncopated riffs on holiday standards. Dec. 20.
Image: Delphine Deneir — Flickr
Get a bit o’ Gaelic glow, during this “musical solstice celebration” composed of songs, dances and readings that all bespeak the traditions of an Irish Christmas. Symphony Space, Dec. 20 & 21.
The male sextet Lionheart offers up a Gregorian Chant and Polyphony for Advent and Christmas—a concert set, appropriately, within the medieval confines of the chapel at The Cloisters. Dec. 21.
A mix of traditional and popular carols, performed by singers from Mannes College, resound throughout the Morgan Library & Museum—creating extra ambiance for perusing the original manuscript of “A Christmas Carol” and an exhibit of artists’ holiday cards on display. Dec. 21.
Image: skpy — Flickr
Celebrate the Festival of Lights with a Chanukkah Concert, featuring cantors singing Jewish verses and tunes from all over the world. Jewish Community Center in Manhattan, Dec. 22.
If you only hear Handel’s Messiah once a year, this is the time. And what better place than within the acoustically grand Carnegie Hall, which is offering not one, but two performances this season: by the venerable Oratorio Society of New York (which has done it every year since 1874) on Dec. 22, and Musica Sacra’s slightly younger, but still highly respected version, on Dec. 23.
A century ago, a unique Christmas celebration took place—between opposing armies on the battlefield during World War I. Weaving together the words of participants and the prayers and carols they recited and sang, the male vocal ensemble Cantus recreates that impromptu Christmas Truce of 1914. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dec. 23.
Boston Public Library — Flickr
Late Renaissance carols played on wood recorders, drinking songs, and Latin motets for male voices—all the fixings of a good old Dutch Christmas—make up this concert by Early Music New York at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Dec. 25.
Kosher Gospel—sounds crazy, no? Ah, but wait ’til you hear how Joshua Nelson (a singer/Hebrew teacher from New Jersey) and accompanying choir blend two rich musical traditions to raise the roof at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, Dec. 25.