Houston Chamber Choir finds the perfect grand venue for annual Christmas concert.
The Houston Chamber Choir’s annual Christmas concert at The Villa de Matel is a long-standing tradition in Houston’s choral community, a particularly happy accord between performers and venue.
And with so many of Houston’s performing-arts organizations still scrambling to find places to perform in Hurricane Harvey’s wake, it’s a comfort to know that Mother Nature has left this unique artistic union unscathed.
A hidden gem to many longtime Houstonians, The Villa de Matel is the spiritual home and place of worship to the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word. Stepping into this chapel is like stepping from 21st-century Houston into a 14th-century Italian duomo. Rows of carved wooden bench seats face one another down the length of the long cathedrallike nave, leading to an altar beneath a semidome illustrated with mosaics depicting the crucifixion. Ornate, Romantic depictions of the Mystery of the Rosary and the Incarnate Word reach out from the midst of dazzling, kaleidoscopic stainedglass settings.
On Saturday afternoon, Houston Chamber Choir stepped into this bejeweled setting and sang one of five performances, titled “Mother and Child: Christmas at the Villa,” to a capacity audience. The Villa’s reverberant cathedral acoustics perfectly suited the Houston Chamber Choir’s Anglican high church aesthetic. The singers didn’t need to work so hard to produce sound; the hall did some of the vocal heavy lifting for them, freeing the singers to focus on nuance.
Artistic director and conductor Robert Simpson crafted a mostly a capella program that took full advantage of this, with final chords lingering in the air a second beyond the cessation of sound. Only the sweeping, brisk waltz rhythms of the traditional carol “Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day” briefly subverted the Villa’s acoustical advantage and clouded the choir’s otherwise transparent sound.
Aside from a sharp moment in the opening of the processional “Once in Royal David’s City,” and a chord that didn’t quite tune up in William Billings “A Virgin Unspotted,” the 24-member ensemble sang with effortless unity and warmth throughout the afternoon, especially in works like Mendelssohn’s “Rejoice, Ye People on Earth.” Surprisingly, the program favored modern composers like Arvo Pärt, Francis Poulenc and John Rutter, and included Houston-based composers David Ashley White and Daniel Knaggs.
Led by director Marianna Parnas-Simpson, guest artists The Treble Choir of Houston made a beautiful contrast to the warm, full sound of their host choir. In David Ashley White’s “Spirit, Moving Over Chaos,” the choir’s 33 young women created an ethereal effect; their pure, bright sound hovering in the air illuminated by the pealing of hand chimes, all sonically held aloft by the columned pedal tones of the Villa’s pipe organ.
The audience joined in singing traditional carols like “Lo, How a Rose E’re Blooming,” “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing,” and “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” The circle was complete, the audience encouraged to actively engage with both Houston Chamber Choir and The Villa de Matel, and share in a singular union of performers and performance space.