South Florida Classical Review

As Miami Art Week winds down and the weather begins to dip into the 60s, musicians across the city are gearing up for the holiday festivities. 

Among the throng of concert offerings, “A Seraphic Fire Christmas” has remained one of the city’s most beloved yearly offerings. The ensemble premiered their 2024 Christmas program Saturday evening in the warm candlelit space of St Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Miami. 

Anthony Trecek-King, this year’s guest conductor, took a moment to greet the audience and build a friendly atmosphere. His smile was infectious, and he spoke with charm and sophistication. 

Those qualities were on display in his conducting throughout the evening as well. He brought something magical out of the choir, which was always carefully controlled but utterly captivating. The singers showed a vibrant range of color, playing upon the resonances of the space and exploiting both the use and disuse of vibrato. Their collective sound seemed to shine like the cathedral itself.

The concert began strongly, with the choir entering from the back of the church. The booming voice of tenor David Pelino intoned the first lines of the spiritual “Rise Up Shepherd,” and was met antiphonally in response in a captivating arrangement by choral music legend Roland Carter.

The choir continued with a favorite from past Christmas concerts, the arrangement of “Adeste Fideles” (O Come All Ye Faithful) by Patrick Dupre Quigley, the choir’s founder and longtime artistic director. In this version, the original Latin text was first sung to a Gregorianized version of the hymn tune, in the style of medieval liturgical chant. Then the more familiar English version was sung in a splendidly harmonized polyphonic arrangement.

Two pieces offered a more modernist color to the evening. A setting of the Latin anthem “Ave Maria, Gratia Plena” by Robert Nathaniel Dett included some of the most imaginative choral writing on the program. The singers handled the gliding polyphonic textures masterfully, highlighting the work’s formal sophistication. This was later complemented by a harmonically adventurous setting titled “Solstice” by Taylor Scott Davis.

These more contemporary works alternated with more traditional offerings, including the hymn “There Stood In Heaven a Linden Tree” in an arrangement by Susan LaBarr and the spiritual “Mary Had a Baby,” arranged by Stacey Gibbs. The voices of the countertenors William Duffy and Doug Dodson brought personality and flavor to the spiritual.

For a few pieces, the singers arranged themselves geometrically through the space. Tomás Luís de Victoria’s setting of “O Magnum Mysterium,” a staple of historic repertoire, was sung in a circle. The delicate Renaissance polyphony seemed to waft upward from the group like incense. Then, in Ola Gjeilo’s arrangement of “Away in a Manger,” the singers gathered themselves into three tight clusters, featuring mezzo-soprano Alexandra Colaizzi warmly singing the melody against a backdrop of hums.

The evening took a somber turn with “The Flight” by Richard Causton. This work speaks of Mary and Joseph’s forced migration to the Levant, using a text by George Szirtes, who himself first came to England as a Hungarian refugee (and also sounding a note of contemporary relevance).

The music features harsh, angular phrases articulated by singers facing in different directions. In one particularly powerful moment, two high soprano voices imitate a siren. This brought the story to modern relevance in a city where so many people have experienced the same. The piercing timbre of the singers’ high voices in such a resonant space creates difference tones, beatings on the surface of the listener’s eardrum, to terrifying effect. These sections were contrasted with a haunting chorale sung in almost a whisper: “May Bethlehem give rest to them.”

In a return to more familiar holiday fare, the choir revived an old classic, Elizabeth Poston’s “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree.” This wonderful number ended with the choir surrounding the audience, sounding off the hymn tune one by one in close canon. It gave the audience a unique chance to focus in on the singers’ distinctive individual voices as they interwove throughout the space. 

The Poston carol was followed up by a cozy work by Jacob Narverund called “Season of Light,” and another spiritual, “See that Star!,” arranged by Victor C. Johnson. Tenor Rohan Ramanan took the spotlight as soloist for the spiritual, displaying charisma and joy.

The concert ended with a yearly tradition, Quigley’s arrangement of the enduringly popular Franz Xaver Gruber melody “Stille Nacht” (“Silent Night”). As the chandeliers dimmed, leaving only candlelight illuminating the stage, the choir sang, first in unison in the original German, then in harmony in the English translation. Trecek-King invited the audience to sing along as the choir exited, holding candles, to a reprise of the first verse.

Trecek-King brought the choir back on stage for the gospel classic “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” in a lively rendition by Roland Carter. This proved popular enough for the audience to demand its immediate repetition. Pelino belted out the solo verses, later improvising impassioned melismas on top of a bustling polyphonic texture.

“A Seraphic Fire Christmas” will be repeated Sunday in Sarasota, Monday in Naples, Dec. 11 in West Palm Beach, Dec. 13 in Coral Gables, Dec. 14 in Fort Lauderdale, Dec. 15 in Miami, and Dec. 19 in Aventura. seraphicfire.org

Posted in Performances

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