Over the past thirty-nine years, Music for Christmas has become the signature concert of the New England Chamber Choir.   With works spanning fifteen centuries, this concert explores the extraordinary repertoire of music inspired by the traditions of Christmas.  

Music for Christmas XXXIX opens with a Gregorian chant sung from the back of the hall. A solo voice begins John Goss’s “See Amid the Winter’s Snow,” and the choir processes to the front. The concert continues with works of Johannes Brahms, Adrian Willaert and Orlando Lassus along with carols sung in Ukrainian, German, French, Huron, and 15th-century English.  Our own musical age is saluted with new works by Sergei Sorokin and Martin Freestone Fay.  A delightful surprise occurs as the young voices of the Treble Choir ring out from the back of the hall with “O du fröhliche.”  They too process to the front and join the choir for the remainder of the concert.  The audience itself joins the choir in singing the recessional carol “Angels We Have Heard on High.” With the entire ensemble encircling the church, the room settles into candlelit silence.  The performance ends as it has for thirty-nine years, with Franz Grüber’s miraculous “Stille Nacht,” which sounds forth loudly that  “Christ the Saviour is here.”