Joy to the World

Your favorites from Handel’s Messiah & the RJB Holiday Suite

Event details

Sunday, December 18, 2022
3:00 p.m.

Hackensack Meridian Health Theatre, Count Basie Center for the Arts
99 Monmouth St, Red Bank, NJ

Monmouth Civic Chorus returns to Red Bank’s Count Basie Center for the Arts with our beloved annual holiday program featuring your favorite excerpts from Handel’s Messiah and our own Dr. Ryan James Brandau’s magical holiday suite.

Concert runtime is approximately 90 minutes plus intermission. We recommend 5:30 dinner reservations to be on the safe side.

Street parking in Red Bank is FREE on concert day.

Accessibility

By clicking on the stick figure in a blue circle on the right side of your screen, you can access accessibility features for this digital program such as larger text and higher contrast.

Program

Act 1

O Come, O Come Emmanuel / God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen — Plainchant and Trad. English, arr. Brandau

Y la gloria de Jehová (Mesías) — G. F. Handel (1685-1759), adap. George P. Simmonds, Jorge Sedaca, and Bruce Muskrat

Away in a Manger — James R. Murray, arr. Brandau (instrumental)
“A quietly attentive strong-willed woman” – written/read by Robert Kelly

Había pastores / Y he aquí, un ángel del Señor / Pero el ángel les dijo / De repente apareció con el ángel — Handel (Claire Leyden, soprano)

Gloria in Excelsis (Cantata 191) — J. S. Bach (1685-1750)

Go Tell it on the Mountain — arr. Margaret Bonds, orch. Brandau (Kenneth Budka, baritone)

Porque un Niño es nacido — Handel

Alégrate mucho, Jija de Sión — Handel (Claire Leyden, soprano)

The Ballad of the Brown King — Bonds
I. Of the Three Wise Men (Douglas Clark, tenor)
II. They Brought Fine Gifts
III. Sing Alleluia
IV. Mary Had a Little Baby
VIII. That Was a Christmas Long Ago
IX. Alleluia!

Still, Still, Still / Silent Night — Trad. Austrian and Franz Xaver Gruber, arr. Brandau

Joy to the World — Handel, arr. Brandau

Aleluya — Handel

Intermission

Act II

O Come All Ye Faithful (singalong) — John Francis Wade, arr. Brandau

Greensleeves — Trad. English, arr. Brandau (instrumental)

Jingle Bells (singalong) — John Pierpont, arr. Brandau

I Saw Three Ships — Trad. English, arr. Brandau

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day — John Baptiste Calkin, arr. Brandau (Kenneth Wasser, baritone)

Gesu Bambino — Pietro Yon, arr. Brandau

Wassail —Trad. English, arr. Brandau (Matthew Izzo, tenor)

“No matter how far away you roam” — written/read by Robert Kelly 

Auld Lang Syne — Trad. Scots, arr. Brandau

We Wish You a Merry Christmas — arr. Brandau

Audience singalongs

O Come, All Ye Faithful
O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant
O come ye, O come ye, to Bethlehem
Come and behold Him
Born the King of Angels
O come, let us adore Him
O come, let us adore Him
O come, let us adore Him
Christ the Lord!

Jingle Bells
verse 1
Dashing through the snow
In a one-horse open sleigh
O’er the fields we go
Laughing all the way.
Bells on bobtail ring
Making spirits bright,
What fun it is to ride and sing
A sleighing song tonight.

refrain
Jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way
Oh what fun it is to ride
In a one-horse open sleigh, 
Jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way
Oh what fun it is to ride
In a one-horse open sleigh.

verse 2
A day or two ago
I thought I’d take a ride
And soon, Miss Fanny Bright
Was seated by my side.
The horse was lean and lank
Misfortune seemed his lot
He got into a drifted bank
And we, we got upsot.

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Selected texts & translations

The Ballad of the Brown King

RJB’s remarks

We’re delighted you’ve chosen to celebrate the holidays with us through music. After some time away in 2020 and 2021, we’ve been especially keen to return to our musical home: the concert. And what better way to do so than with a concert of holiday music?

Our program reaches back across the ages to some of the first melodies ever written down and presents them alongside familiar carols and the spirited music of Handel and Bach. You’ll hear timeless tunes sung by heart by untold millions over hundreds of years as well as new arrangements on which the ink is barely dry. The texts of these pieces don’t precisely delineate the stories of the holidays so much as trace their outlines and highlight several moments and key themes: the yearning to be lifted out of darkness and gloom into light and hope, the joy of sharing good news, and the potential for renewal portended by a newborn (and latent in us all).

These are touchstones for any ear and every era. I hope that some combination of word, melody, and space conjures for you a doorway into a realm of reflection, even reverie, where you can marvel at the beauty of music.

Each season, just as we might trim our trees with treasured heirloom ornaments alongside new keepsakes, we revisit the Christmas story in a slightly different way, sampling different carols and melodies, ancient and new, or by hearing new spoken and musical languages.

This year, we hear Handel’s indelible riffs in Messiah sparkle with new jubilance when sung through the prism of the bright, clear vowels of the Spanish language. Many “traditional” holiday tunes featured on this program come to us by way of England and Germany and are steeped in 18^th– and 19^th-century musical style. This season, we’ll complement them with the story of the Magi as told through the words and music of two 20^th-century American artists: the poet Langston Hughes and the composer Margaret Bonds.

After meeting each other around 1930, Hughes encouraged Bonds to move to New York City, and they quickly formed a friendship and artistic relationship. Bonds recalled “we were like brother and sister.”

Harpist and Bonds scholar Ashley Jackson notes: “Over the years, she sent him melodies, requested lyrics, and told him when she felt certain phrases did not suit her musical conception. They also gossiped, exchanged Christmas greetings, and offered each other words of advice and encouragement.”

The fruitful collaboration yielded many beautiful art songs, and, eventually, a Christmas cantata, from which we’ll share several movements today, The Ballad of the Brown King. Langston Hughes’s libretto for The Ballad of the Brown King focuses on Balthazar, the Black king who journeyed to Bethlehem to witness the birth of Jesus Christ. Created and revised throughout the second half of the 1950s, in the midst of a burgeoning civil rights movement, Ballad had a purpose and mission beyond its musical one.

In a letter to Hughes, Bonds shed some light on her conception of the work’s significance, writing, “It is a great mission to tell Negroes how great they are.” The centering of a dark-skinned King in the Christmas narrative was a powerful, purposeful artistic choice.

Jackson notes: “As is evident in their works that celebrate Black beauty, Bonds and Hughes shared a mutual understanding of their roles as cultural ambassadors for racial uplift. Bonds wrote to Hughes that the creation of Ballad of the Brown King gave “the dark youth of America a cantata which makes them proud to sing.” And by 1961, after a well-received performance, Bonds confidently avowed, in a letter to Hughes: “The Brown King definitely ‘led the parade’ this Xmas. You and I together have created a choral composition to be programmed with Bach and Handel.” And so we shall!

And while I hope you enjoy your experience as an individual listener, I hope you’ll also take a moment to appreciate the uniquely communal experience of attending a concert. After so much time apart, and so much time alone, listening only to digital signals buzzing metallic speakers, the joyful, comforting, familiar music of the holidays, born of breath and body, enjoyed together, resonates more deeply than ever.

Just as the global community has, our Monmouth Civic Chorus community has experienced loss, of cherished singers and audience members who have passed or moved away. And at the same time, we’ve welcomed new musicians and listeners. It is the love of music that begets that community and communion.

I sincerely hope that some musical moment experienced today reminds you, palpably, happily, of what a joy it is to be human, alongside others, and what a gift it is to be able to surrender ourselves to one of the most meaningful manifestations of humanity: music. It is in this spirit that our penultimate selection will remind us all how precious it is that music, like the holidays themselves, can bring us together in the present and give an occasion for future reunion. 

Auld Lang Syne bids us lean on one another, take a cup o’ kindness, and raise a glass for auld lang syne—for the sake of old times—while we turn toward the next chapter. Thank you for choosing to join us this afternoon as we look back and look forward to our next time together.

“For there’s a trusty hand, my friend, and give me a hand o’ thine, for we’ll take a right good-will draught for auld lang syne.”

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Join us on tour

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MCC is kicking off our 75th anniversary season with a tour of Northern Italy and Southern Austria. If you’d like to learn more about traveling with us as a singer or supporter, please download the details here. Interested travelers, please contact Doris Clark, MCC member and owner of Smolka Tours, at info@smolkatours.com or 800-722-0057.

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Meet the artists

We’re thrilled to welcome back celebrated soprano Claire Leyden.

Commended for her “magnetic stage presence” and “crystalline soprano,” Claire Leyden is a singer and actress with an extensive background in musical theater, concert, and operatic repertoire.  Claire feels equally at home in a variety of genres, and the diversity of her recent performances speaks to her love of, and versatility in, the “crossover” repertoire.

Claire was most recently seen traveling the country as Mrs. Bucket in the 2021-2022 Broadway national tour of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  Other recent projects include Mabel in the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players’ touring production of The Pirates of Penzance, the title role in the New York revival of Victor Herbert’s Madeleine, and Heartbeat Opera’s critically-acclaimed production of Der Freischütz.  Claire is an avid collaborator in new work across all genres; recent world premieres include It’s a Small World (or, The Robot Play) by Amber Palmer, Pietà by Jake Landau, and The Extinctionist by Daniel Schlosberg and Amanda Quaid.

A native of the beautiful Hudson Valley, Claire loves to explore the outdoors and is committed to climate causes and making the world a little better than she found it!  When not on stage, she loves to spend time with her fiancé Greg, hiking and quizzing one another on the Latin names of plants.

Member soloists

Poetry

MCC members performing

Instrumentalists performing

In memoriam

Monmouth Civic Chorus mourns the passing of our Conductor Emeritus William R. Shoppell Jr., who truly led MCC through an era — from 1963 until his retirement in 1992. Bill played an indelible role in shaping the organization we all love so much to this day. Learn more about his legacy here.

We also honor former member Charles Wilder, who sang with MCC in the 1990s and early 2000s and remained an active supporter of our music throughout his lifetime.

Watch the official trailer

Press

• You can download the press release for this event if you like.
• Thank you to Courtney Smith and NJArts for the lovely feature article.