The Sentinel-Record - HER - Hot Springs
Christmas Cheer
Garvan Woodland Gardens' concerts imbue visitors with the holiday spirit
It starts on All Hallows and continues through the Epiphany. Salving the secular and faithful alike, it's the soundtrack to the spectacle that restores hope in the cynical and suspends disbelief in mythical snowman and flying reindeer that alight on rooftops.
Building from a creep to a gallop, holiday music competes with the season's attendant commercialization as the earliest harbinger of Christmas. It's at full pitch by Black Friday, a pervasiveness that yields neither contempt nor indifference, but an infatuation that blooms anew in the austerity of the approaching solstice.
It's music that conjures halcyon remembrances of holidays past, when for many the euphoria conferred by the season was unabated by experience, regret and loss. A tonic works that works like an elixir on the spirit of the hard-bitten, pushing present circumstances to a comfortable remove from the hope the music inspires.
“It brings back memories from childhood, like listening to Christmas music with grandparents and family” said Kristin Mangham, membership and special events director at Garvan Woodland Gardens. “Now I'm sharing those memories with my children. It's just a happy time of year. It gets everybody's in a festive spirit. It's hard to be a Debbie Downer when so many exciting things are going on.”
The botanical garden is center ring for holiday enthusiasm as its Anthony Chapel transitions from sought-after wedding spot to performance hall. Music and the 4.5 million lights that embellish the property's flora combine for a six-week celebration that draws more than 50,000 people.
Garvan Gardens Marketing Director Sherre Freeman she the spirit that pervades the grounds puts her in accord with Andy Williams' take on the season.
“You know what the song says, `It's the most wonderful time of the year,'” she said. “It's a festive time of year that for a lot of people ties in with their faith.”
With glass rising from the floor to a lofty cathedral ceiling buttressed by a lattice-like arrange- ment of pine columns, Anthony Chapel provides a unique matrix for joyful noises to be rendered and received.
“There's not many venues that have the acoustics and views you get in there with all the wood and glass,” said Bart Morrison, the minister of music at Hot Springs Baptist Church.
Its choir will perform one of the numerous free concerts the chapel hosts during the runup to Christmas. Morrison said the ensemble is scaled to the intimate setting, paring what's normally a 30-to-35-piece orchestra to 20 musicians and 70 singers.
“We're looking forward to it,” Morrison said of the Dec. 16 performance. “Last year was our first time to be out there, and we had a wonderful time. It's always an incredible joy and lots of fun to sing to a packed house. It's a beautiful venue with wonderful acoustics.”
Morrison said Christmas doesn't begin in earnest until the most identifiable songs in the holiday canon have been sung, hence the sing-along segment of the choir's performance. Full-throated participation is encouraged.
“There's a lot of songs people love to sing at Christmas time,” he said “For a lot of people, it's not Christmas until they've sung `Joy to the World' or `O Holly Night.' Those are several that really make people's season. That's part of the reason we're doing a sing-along, so people can enjoy the spirit and celebrate with us.”
“It brings back memories from childhood, like listening to Christmas music with grandparents and family.”
The Hot Springs Flute Ensemble's Dec. 21 performance concludes the concert series. Previous performances at the chapel have shaped the ensemble's arrangements and seating configurations to a calibration that optimizes the acoustics, allowing the intricate eight-part harmonies to resound through the six-story space.
“It has interesting acoustics that you have to know how to work with,” said Jackie Flowers, the ensemble's executive director. “You have to be careful where you locate the piccolo. Then it's wonderful playing there. The stage accommodates us so well, and it's the right size audience to hear a group our size.
“It's happy music, and it's traditional. The flute choir and its blend of sounds is a different experience. It's like an organ, but instead it's a bunch of individual people playing. The combination of tones is perfectly suited to Christmas music.”
The Crystal Chimes Chorus was sans instruments for its Dec. 15 performance. The all-female group singing a cappella four-part harmonies in barbershop style represent holiday music in the raw, evoking Rockwellian imagery of carolers regaling the townsfolk as they're borne along the countryside by horse-drawn carriage.
“It's one of the simplest forms of music, but also one of the most complicated,” said Pat Bellamy, one of the more than two dozen women in the group. “A lot of people like to go caroling. You don't have instruments with you when you go caroling, so it lends itself to sharing the joy of music with other people.
“That's the beauty of barbershop, one of the original music experiences that began in America.”
The simultaneous sounding of notes coalescing into euphonious harmonies symbolizes the mood fostered by the season, Morrison said. It's when peace and repose displace tumult and discord and those at cross-purposes find common cause. The time for the narcissism of the individual to give way to concern for the collective.
“It brings people close to home and reminds them of happy times from years gone by that can be recaptured for 2015,” he said. “In a world where things seem to be so completely out of control, it brings normalcy to people's lives. It allows us to put our focus on Jesus. He's the reason we sing and play music and have hope for this world.”