Muston
Returning for a 10th year, Indianapolis’ Beechers Singers and Orchestra are inviting community members to come out and take a break this Christmas season for a holiday performance at St. Paul Lutheran Church. This free concert will begin at 7 p.m., with a pre-concert harp recital taking place at 6:40 p.m.
The Beechers Singers and Orchestra, a professional chamber choir at Indianapolis’ Second Presbyterian Church, has been at St. Paul Lutheran for 10 years now as of this year. Second Presbyterian Church director of music and fine arts Michelle Louer said they are thrilled to be coming back.
“Since we’ve been doing it so long, we know many of the congregants and the patrons who come so we get to see them every year,” Louer said. “It’s a little bit like a reunion; they’re just such a gracious group of people and this time of year, the best thing about the whole year is making music, so the opportunity to share music again is really a privilege and we’re delighted and honored to do it.”
Songs will be performed by four treble soloists, or two sopranos and two altos, alongside their string quintet, oboe, piano and harp. John Allegar will join them on the organ, and harpist Wendy Muston will also perform during the pre-concert.
Muston, the principal harpist of the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, considers Columbus to be very special to her as she previously performed with the Columbus Indiana Philharmonic as their principal harpist. Though she has performed with the Beechers Singers and Orchestra before at St. Paul, it has been a few years due to prior commitments.
This year, though, she made sure to clear her calendar so she could come back. She plans to perform some of her favorite Christmas songs like “Jessye’s Carol” and “Sussex Carol.”
“I look forward to this, this is a beautiful kind of a Christmas card, I think. (A) Christmas card of music, because the singers are phenomenal,” Muston said. “(Louer) is the best, (Louer) is just so full of artistic talent and she expresses her love through her music. So it’s just wonderful to work with them.”
The concert will include familiar settings of songs like “Still, Still, Still” and “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” in addition to some new repertoire like “A Winter Hymn” by Shara Nova and “This Endris Night” by Canadian composer Sarah Quartel. The latter of these pieces will utilize handbells, which Louer said gives it a more mystical atmosphere.
A setting of “I Wonder as I Wander” by National Lutheran Choir conductor Jennaya Robison will be performed as well.
“The Jennaya Robison piece, I did want to make that connection with the Lutheran church and so she arranged a beautiful setting of ‘I Wonder as I Wander’ for four treble voices, harp and oboe, which fits exactly with our instrumentation,” Louer said. “And then Sarah Quartel is a composer I’ve used before, I’ve done some of her stuff, it’s just so beautiful and so compelling.”
Louer said it has been fun exploring the possibilities of different combinations of instruments and voices and has propelled them to look at new repertoire and new settings of familiar repertoire. She said they will also utilize the space a little differently, singing from the front, back and four corners.
“The acoustics are so beautiful at St. Paul’s that it’s really fun to utilize that,” Louer said.
To Louer, the concert serves as a 90-minute pause from the busy Christmas season. For some people, the season may bring on feelings of sadness, stress or happiness, feelings that she said are all captured and held in this concert. She believes everyone will leave the concert with a lighter heart and a more joyful, peaceful spirit.
“So it’s a minute just to take a pause for about 90 minutes and it’s really a gift to yourself to experience such beautiful and fun music,” Louer said. ”I mean, we’re doing some serious stuff, but our setting of ‘Go Tell It on the Mountain’ is a gospel setting. We’re doing a couple of Appalachian American folk settings of some of the Christmas carols. So it’s a really wide diversity of music that really celebrates what the season is all about.”
