FROM OUR LIVING ROOM TO YOURS
Holiday Songs from Around the World concert is Sunday
The Ukiah Symphony Orchestra will present its second, live, virtual Salons with the Symphony concert—holiday Songs from Around the World—on Sunday at 5 p.m. featuring vocalist Melinda Martinez-becker and music director Phillip Lenberg.
Lenberg will accompany Martinez-becker on guitar as they perform an intimate concert of holiday songs— casual, eclectic and multi- cultural—in English, Spanish, Yiddish, Hebrew and Latin.
Mezzo soprano Martinez-Becker, who was scheduled to sing Gustav Mahler’s “Songs of a Wayfarer” in the Ukiah Symphony Orchestra’s final performance in May of 2020, grew up singing and became a cantor— the musical leader of a Jewish congregation—in her early teens.
Although she wanted to continue singing in college, she hesitated because she had had no formal music training other than having taken piano lessons and realized she would have a great deal of catch up to do if she pursued music as a major.
Her vocation, however, called to her and she attended Santa Clara University where “she stumbled into the world of classical music” studying and performing opera, gospel, jazz and art songs, as well.
“I love the flexibility of art songs—music set to poetry; they can range from the Baroque to the contemporary.”
After receiving a B. A. Degree in Music and an M.A. Degree in Education, she attended the San Francisco Conservatory of Music where she earned her Master of Music Degree.
She and Lenberg met in 2014 as first year teachers where they ran the music department at an international school in San Francisco.
Prior to receiving his Masters and Doctoral Degrees in Musical Arts from the University of Nevada Las Vegas leading to his conducting career, Lenberg received an undergraduate degree in classical guitar while attending the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto and SUNY Stony Brook.
With a performance-oriented study, he says it was not unusual to practice five to six hours a day playing solo or performing in re
citals with singers and with string quartets.
Although the traditional conservatory study trains soloists, both Lenberg and Martinez-becker were drawn to playing collaboratively rather than following a traditional solitary career.
“Moving toward being a conductor has been a natural part of what I wanted as a musician, going from solo study to ensemble playing, large or small,” he says.
In choosing their program, they decided to select Christmas and Hanukah songs from different parts of the world including popular carols, well-known traditionals and some unusual selections.
“Drey Dreydl” (“Turn Dreidel”) by Moyshe Oysher is an upbeat Yiddish song celebrating the traditions of Hanukah ( Dec. 10-18) and the children’s game that employs the four-sided spinning top to commemorate the great miracle that occurred over 2,000 years ago.
“Noche de Paz,” the traditional German Austrian song written as a poem by Joseph Mohr in 1816 and set to music by his friend Franz Gruber in 1818, is the Spanish version of “Silent Night.”
“It has become part of the Latinx Christmas song canon,” she says.
And, of course, the classic, “The Christmas Song,” subtitled “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire,” written by Mel Torme and Bob Wells in 1944 and first recorded by the King Cole Trio in 1944.
“I think Torme’s version is still the best,” she says.
Other selections include “Regalo de Reyes” from Mexico; “O Come O Come Emmanuel,” sung in Latin and English; and the “Coventry Carol,” a traditional English carol from the 16th century.
“People will recognize this one,” she says.
Both Martinez- Becker and Lenberg consider themselves fortunate to be teaching, she at Dominican College in San Raphael as a vocal performance teacher and director of an a cappella choral ensemble and he at Mendocino College as a professor and conductor of instrumental ensembles, but COVID has taken its toll on them as it has for all performing musicians.
“Just going to my calendar on my website; it’s so sad; everything has been postponed or cancelled. My last in-person gig was in the second week of March,” she says.
As a freelancer, each of her performances are events that require a great deal of pre-planning.
“It’s been crushing on a personal level, to have all that gone, making it very difficult to cope. Being a performer is so much a part of who I am—so much so that I didn’t realize it until it was gone.”
Lenberg says the lives of musicians are structured from gig to gig, piece to piece, project to project and suddenly having nothing to do next, with no definitive light at the end of the tunnel, has left a tremendous void.
“It’s true for all of us; we’ve had to reinvent who we are and what we’re doing as musicians because the basic fundamental practice of what we do is no longer there. To not have an end date is very challenging.”
Virtual membership at https://www.ukiahsymphony.org/becomeavirtualmember.html includes free access to Salons with the Symphony concerts throughout the season, as well as Members Theater, where members can watch concerts on- demand after they air. Membership gift cards are newly available for purchase online for the holidays.
Up Close and Classical Podcast are free at https://www.ukiahsymphony.org/upclose-andclassicalpodcast.html.
Tickets: https://www.ukiahsymphony.org/salonswith-the-symphony.html.
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/920244298505922.