3rd Sunday in Advent—Gaudete—Rejoice

These are some of my favorite things. Last Advent/Christmas season Carol and I were in Italy. We enjoyed visiting Venice, Florence and Rome very much but we also realized that we loved a lot of things that go on in our home town of Billings Montana USA, especially starting in late November and going on through most of December all the way to Epiphany in early January.

I suppose that is one of the reasons for travel: to realize how good you have it at home. One of those goods in Billings is the presence of many good singers and instrumentalists and fans of that sort of home-made music. And there are enough of us show-offs, religious or not, that we like to do this sort of thing around this part of the year, early on the religious calendar and late on the secular calendar.

This past Sunday afternoon we enjoyed Bellissimo, a really good bell choir, at First Methodist—see the sanctuary above, the big bells to the left, with the ringers and singers below— in downtown Billings. They usually have enough fans to warrant a couple of performances. Led by Julie Draeger and joined by the Magic City Singers, this was a pleasant Sunday afternoon. Even got to sing a few verses of Silent Night.

With the malls and other places spoiling ordinary versions of a lot of Christmas carols by their constant repetion it seems to me that we need an unusual sound or arrangement or both to perk up our interest in Silent Night or Joy To The World, but curiously enough, there are still lots of people out there still writing songs to celebrate this joyous Jesus season: John Rutter is one of them; and not surprisingly Bellissimo performed Hart Morris's difficult On This Day Earth Shall Ring with notable aplomb.

The Magic City Singers were led by Chris Sheppard with some help on percussion from young people pressed into service as jingle bell shakers and whip snappers on a nice vocal arrangement of Sleigh Ride.

For unclear reasons a very early carol, The First Nowell, always attracts my attention and it did here as well. There were other good songs including one by John Rutter. Nice solos too.

Those are the ringers taking a bow to the right with the singers in the background and some appreciative fans in the foreground in the very attractive First Methodist sanctuary.















To the right and left are some of the decorations at Mount Olive Lutheran Church in preparation for the Christmas season. These elaborately dressed dolls are getting ready for a concert by the nearby West High School choirs this coming Thursday evening, 18 December. This should be worth listening to.

I forgot to mention some of the stuff that went on the weekend before. On the left is the big-voiced and pretty Amy Logan, almost hidden by the acrobatic John Baber, and some members of the string sections of the Billings Community Orchestra. Amy alone was worth the price of admission. They were getting ready, along with the Al Bedoo Chanters and the Akzents, for their 6 December Saturday afternoon concert at the Alberta Bair Theatre.

And then Sunday afternoon was the Messiah with some very able soloists and a strong-throated community chorus led by the prodigal David Reynolds: excellent stuff.

And then in the evening we heard the absolutely delicious Rocky Mountain College singers and instrumentalists led by the splendid splinter—sorry Ted W— of Billings, Stephen Hart, doing their annual Festival Lessons and Carols concert at the First Presbyterian Church on 13th and Poly. Dr Hart is clearly a wizard and one of our true treasures.

This year we will have two performances of the Nutcracker. The Eugene Ballet did one in late November and one of the Moscow Ballet companies is doing one this coming Tuesday, 16 December, at the Alberta Bair Theatre. This is only a sample of all the musical celebrations going on at this time of the year.