A Choral Christmas Carol

I’ve taken an extended break from Master Chorus Eastside’s blog in order to replenish my creative juices.  Now that they are replenished I’m taking pen—er, computer—in hand because it’s MCE’s 25^th-anniversary season, our season theme is “Where we’ve been, where we’re going,” and we’re kicking off the “Where we’ve been” side with a reprise of one of my favorite concerts from years past, A Choral Christmas Carol.

No, not exactly A Christmas Carol, although Charles Dickens’s tale is at the heart of the concept.

I got the idea many years ago when I saw an adaptation of Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales put on by a chorus as part of their December concert.  They brought in an actor to read the poem, sprinkled Christmas carols throughout at appropriate moments, and sometimes even provided sound effects.  I was enchanted, and immediately thought of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and wondered if I could do something similar.  I’ve long been a Dickens fan and knew it well, but this would be something different and challenging.  It would require cutting the story down to make room for music, and yet keeping the thread of the tale intact.  So, over the months that followed, I pulled out my copy and marked it...and marked it...and marked it, excising parts, fitting pieces together, until I had the bare bones of the story in my hands.

And it was amazing how often different carols sprang to mind as I worked.  I seldom had to search for one.  It was as if the story cried out for carols to make it complete.  I jotted titles down in the margins, and slowly a concept began to form. This would be a combination of two art forms, choral concert and readers theater.  I have always loved readers theater because it leaves so much to the imagination.  There are no sets, just actors on stools reading their scripts, reacting to one another just as they would in a fully staged production.  It was up to my imagination to fill in the blanks.

And since I’m a choral conductor, choral music is one of my reasons for being!

For my A Choral Christmas Carol I would need a Narrator, who would read aloud as if to his family, and Scrooge of course.

They would need to be fine actors since they carried half of the show.  But smaller roles, such as the Cratchit family or the Ghosts, could be played by chorus members who would move in and out of the chorus and into the scenes as needed.  And the chorus itself would be an actor in the drama, commenting on, enhancing, expanding or shedding light on the story through the music.

And it worked!  We’ve performed this piece maybe three or four times over the years.  It is indeed “where we’ve been,” but it’s also “where we’re going”—stimulating the imagination, exploring, bringing joy through music and artistry. I’m really looking forward to doing so again with this production.  It’s really magical.  

Dr. Linda Gingrich

Artistic director and conductor

Master Chorus Eastside