Artistic Director's Notes December 2025 concerts

As Artistic Director I try to be a little adventorous with our concert programs. For example, our last concert featured a well-known Haydn Symphony, as well as traditional Tenor Operatic Arias, but we also had Meatloaf, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and songs from Sesame Street! For this concert, I wanted the music to be more cozy and traditional. We made an early decision to split the concert into two halves, to reflect the changing of seasons at this time of year.

The first half of the concert celebrates Christmas time and the beginning of the traditional Holiday season. I have mixed pieces that include more traditional carols - Silent Night and Good King Wenceslas for example, with more contemporary/pop works to reflect the various tradtions from within the orchestra and our audience.

The second half celebrates the New Year, and especially is a celebration of the traditional Viennese New Year's Eve concerts. The Vienna Philharmonic's traditional New Year's Concert started in the 1930s (the first few conducted by Johann Strauss III) and became more popular throughout Europe after the end of the Second World War. The music for these concerts are dominated by the Strauss family, and other Viennese composers. Most of our musical selections reflect that tradition. More recently, the Dutch conductor André Rieu and his Johann Strauss Orchestra have become world famous for their New Year's Eve concerts. and their concerts have expanded to include a wider variety of music from different periods and countries. We have included some pieces that reflect this more modern tradition.

Finally I want to, as always, thank our wonderful performers who turn up to rehearse almost every week. I say almost every week as we are a community-based orchestra and people miss rehearsals for various reasons. For example:

• one of our performers works as an EMS worker

• one is a midwife (If they miss a rehearsal it is because they are helping to bring another life into the world - the best reason I know to miss!)

• we have a performer whose work takes them to many places in the world, and will often schedule the trips so that they leave right after a rehearsal, or more amazingly, arrive at the airport early on a Saturday morning, and will still collect the coffee for us on their way in!

For this concert, we even had a performer who was in another country, and we livestreamed the rehearsals to them, so that they could practice along.

I can't say enough about the dedicated performers that we have.

I also want to acknowledge Juli Vaughn, who is my production partner for all of our concerts and who organizes so many things for us. I am glad that she found the time to also play with us again. I also want to acknowledge Meredith Petherick who is our Front of House Manager, and who also puts up with me at our home, and is the person I trust in the world the most.