2018: A Year of Winning Musical Collaborations Across the City

In 2018, the key players of San Diego’s classical music scene struck gold by collaborating with each other. Enlisting some 10 musical organizations in its month-long “It’s About Time Time” festival in January, the San Diego Symphony set a high bar of cooperation for the coming year, but other organizations readily took up the challenge with rewarding results.

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San Diego Pro Arte Voices’ Musically Rich Evening of Readings and Carols

Although most of the Christmas music performed during the holiday season was originally intended for church services, in these secular times music lovers tend to hear this repertory in concert settings. A felicitous compromise is the Service of Lessons and Carols, an English invention that simply alternates seasonal music and Biblical readings like a very…

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Bach Collegium San Diego’s Stirring J.S. Bach ‘Christmas Oratorio’

Ruben Valenzuela’s Bach Collegium San Diego gave an electric performance of J. S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio Friday (December 14) in the capacious sanctuary of the First United Methodist Church of San Diego. Sung in German by a strong 19 member chorus, accompanied by a fleet 25-piece period instrument ensemble, and guided by Artistic Director Valenzuela’s acute sense of Baroque period performance practice, this concert brought the audience amazingly close to Bach’s musical world.

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