The San Diego Symphony Brings Back ‘Noel Noel” to the Jacobs Music Center
Guest conductor Christopher Dragon has become a favored choice to lead the San Diego Symphony in its regular summer season all-Tchaikovsky concerts and its popular December Christmas concerts. And with good reason: his conducting is authoritative; the orchestra delivers superb performances under his baton, and in his introductions he passionately—and succinctly—communicates with his audiences.
Christopher Dragon [Photo courtesy of the San Diego Symphony]
Friday at the Jacobs Music Center, Dragon presided over this season’s Noel Noel concert, the orchestra’s annual musical present to the community during the Holiday season. Following long established traditions, the orchestra was joined in this concert by the San Diego Master Chorale and the San Diego Children’s Choir. Guest vocalist Ross Lekites also added to this impressive assembly of performers.
Dragon opened this program with Gary Fry’s jubilant “Alleluia, Venite Gaudate,” a spectacular contemporary anthem that forged the two choirs and orchestra into a grand ensemble of joyous acclamation. Although the text was limited to the title, “Alleluia, let us come to praise,” Fry skillfully exploited these vocal and instrumental resources with powerful, soaring phrases that called to mind the stirring chorus with which J.S. Bach opens his Christmas Oratorio.
Perhaps Dragon feared his audience might conclude from this grand opening number that they were in for a serious program of classic Christmas music, so he followed “Alleluia, Venite Gaudate” with a title that dominated the rest of his program: “Various.” His first “Various” medley, composer John Higgins’ Christmas on Broadway, gave the two choirs and orchestra the opportunity to glide through pop standards such as “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” “Toyland,” “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music, and “We Need a Little Christmas.”
This was the San Diego Master Chorale’s first performance with the San Diego Symphony in the renovated Jacobs Music Center, and the Master Chorale acquitted itself nobly with warm, inviting, ensemble sonorities, sparkling renditions of the text, and inspiring emotional interpretive depth. San Diego Master Chorale Music Director John K. Russell led his singers in Ryan James Brandau’s sensitive arrangement of two familiar German carols, “Still, Still, Still” and “Silent Night,” as they floated their heavenly melodies over gentle accompaniment from the orchestra’s string sections. The San Diego Children’s Choir graced the second stanza of “Silent Night” with their well-trained voices accompanied by delicate humming from the Master Chorale, and vocalist Ross Lekites joined at the finale. Although the Children’s Choir Artistic Director Ruthie Millgard did not appear in this concert, her stellar preparation of the young singers was evident with every phrase they sang.
With Ralph Vaughan Williams exuberant “Ring Out Ye Crystal Spheres” from his Christmas Cantata Hodie, the dynamic declamation and radiant, muscular ensemble of the Master Chorale combined with the prowess of the orchestra brought the first section of this concert to a rewarding climax. The remainder of the program meandered through a list of bland tributes to Christmas nostalgia.
In 1942, Irving Berlin’s Academy Award winning song “White Christmas” set the gold standard of capturing pure Christmas nostalgia in a pop song, and current songs such as Donald Fraser’s “This Christmastide” and David Foster’s “Grown Up Christmas List” aim but miss for Berlin’s melodic finesse and emotional poignance.
Dragon conducted a fleet account of Leroy Anderson’s evergreen “Sleigh Ride,” but Ross Lekites’ pop rendition of Adolphe Adam’s “O Holy Night” with casual, laidback phrasing that sold his interpretation of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” sadly missed the fervor of this beloved French 19th-century carol. Those of us who heard the male quartet Kings Return give a masterful, spiritually probing interpretation of “O Holy Night” last week at The Conrad were doubly disappointed.
The text of Gary Fry’s new holiday offering “Christmas in San Diego” catalogued an array of local landmarks and customs from “pandas at the Zoo” to “Christmas tamales” that will surely appeal to the members of San Diego’s Chamber of Commerce. The music of this generic waltz, however, won’t hold their interest for more than 30 seconds.
And Gary Fry’s peppy arrangement of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” provided the apt postlude for this one hour and twenty minute Christmas package.
This program is presented by the San Diego Symphony at the Jacobs Music Center in downtown San Diego and plays with multiple performances from December 13 through 15, 2024. The opening night presentation on December 13 was heard for this review.
Ken Herman, a classically trained pianist and organist, has covered music for the San Diego Union, the Los Angeles Times’ San Diego Edition, and for sandiego.com. He has won numerous awards, including first place for Live Performance and Opera Reviews in the 2017, the 2018, and the 2019 Excellence in Journalism Awards competition held by the San Diego Press Club. A Chicago native, he came to San Diego to pursue a graduate degree and stayed.Read more…
As a native San Diegan who attends Noel Noel every year, I actually loved the “Christmas in San Diego” song!
The entire audience enjoyed the song Christmas in San Diego. I would love to have a copy of the song. Disagree that “The music of this generic waltz, however, won’t hold their interest for more than 30 seconds.”