If anything underscores the ridiculous pace with which time has been hurdling this semester,   it is the fact that the 2012 Christmas Festival, “Love’s Pure Light,” is over and done with.  I would swear that it was just yesterday that I was licking my wounds from my last summertime thrashing on the tennis court at the hands of Dave Krueger – and just the day before yesterday that Kathy and I were baking in the Florida sun during the NATS convention.  And now suddenly,  it’s December 3rd . . . and we have already sung our candlelit Silent Night.  As Grandma Walton so poignantly asked during an episode of “The Waltons” many years ago –  Where Does The Time Go?

Some memories and highlights:

  • Swimming in the Stream . . . .  2012 was the first year that the Carthage Christmas Festival was streamed live over the internet- a fantastic idea which had been considered a few years back but not implemented until the technology and know-how existed to do it right.   I’d actually never even thought of such a thing until four or five years ago when a Carthage alum named Bill Mains (who was a freshman back in 1991 when I began teaching at Carthage) asked me whether or not the school had considered streaming the Festival on the internet for the sake of grads like himself living in faraway places like California.  Being a butter churn/ quill pen kind of guy,  I scarcely knew such a thing was even a possibility outside of the world of Star Trek, but when I brought the idea to Festival producer Charlotte Chell,  she said that they were already exploring the possibility.  Amazing!  And this year the streaming was done,  and it was a great success.  I heard from several different alums . . . Melanie (Mills) Taylor and Shauna (Olson) Adler and Nikki (Phelps) Krenke among them . . .  who experienced the Festival via the internet and were so grateful.
  • In Praise of Painlessness . . . .  Once again, my hat goes off to Dr. Peter Dennee and Dr. Charlotte Chell, director and producer of the Festival,  for helping to make the mounting of such an enormous event a surprisingly painless experience.  Grizzled veterans of the Festival like myself have vivid memories of the days when the rehearsals for Christmas Festival were brutally long,  and by the time you got to the actual weekend of performances you were ready to convert to Buddhism or do anything else that would give you an exit pass from the Festival.  Then the performances would begin and everything was fine-  but the path to opening night was a really tough gauntlet.   I don’t know exactly how but one way or another the week leading up to Festival weekend has been streamlined and simplified.  It may partly be that the non-musical element of the Festival, which used to involve extremely elaborate and complicated contributions from the theater department (complete with costumes, sets, props) have given way to simple, unadorned recitations of scripture that do not require nearly so much in the way of technical wizardry.  Also,  lighting and sound professionals are now brought in to handle most of the technical matters,  which I’m sure is a huge relief.   And maybe there is also a deeper appreciation for the value of students’ time and a more concerted effort not to waste their time.  At any rate, all of us seem to arrive at Festival weekend much less exhausted or stressed out than we once did-  and the students seem to enjoy it all.  (Not all of them; every so often there will be the stray Facebook posting of a student saying “Is it okay if I confess that I really hate Christmas Festival?” but those are very few and far between.  The vast majority of students are happy to be part of it all – and most of them, I would venture to say, are genuinely thrilled, despite the time and energy it demands.
  • Scarcely containing our delight . . . .  In addition to playing piano for the Carthage Choir in several of their pieces,  I was responsible for preparing the Lincoln Chamber Singers for their three pieces.  I’m blessed this year with a very fine group of singers,  but it’s not been particularly easy to get all of them in one room at the same time to rehearse,  meaning that it was essential that each of them do work on their own outside of our infrequent rehearsals to get their music fully learned and memorized.  It was especially scary to go into thanksgiving break, knowing that if they didn’t do any work on their own, they would likely return to campus having lost ground that we couldn’t afford to lose.   At our last rehearsal before break, I presented each of them with a CD with which to practice and implored them to use it as much as they possibly could.  I knew that their essential sense of pride and responsibility would be powerful motivation – nobody wants to perform at a level demonstrably lower than the other groups on the program – and indeed, they came through in glorious fashion.   We sang a tricky five-part motet, “Suauissime Jesu” very successfully- followed by a tender-hearted setting of “Lo, how a Rose”- and finished with my piece “Shepherd’s Gloria.”  For that last piece, we adopted a much lighter, sprightlier approach when we rehearsed Friday afternoon,  and it made an enormous difference in how the whole piece flowed.   When it was all said and done,  I could not have been happier or prouder of these 16 young singers.
  • Christmas Crash (almost) . . . .  Of course,  it wouldn’t be a Greg Berg performance without at least one calamity or near-calamity.   I can’t remember now if it was Friday or Saturday night,  but as I was conducting the group in our first piece,  one of my arms grazed a nearby music stand, which began to topple over.  I managed to grab it before it actually crashed to the floor,  and my singers – God bless them – just kept singing, with extra wide smiles.  And it was evidently dark enough that nobody in the audience seemed to notice.
  • How Silently, How Silently, the Wondrous Gift is Given. . . .  Quite often over the years,  the Chamber Singers would follow the exuberant, roof-rattling Gospel Messengers – which I used to think was an unenviable spot for us.  And this year we followed the Wind Orchestra’s magnificent (and roof-rattling) performance of “A Russian Christmas Fantasy.” It was definitely a tough act to follow.  But at some point I figured out that it’s exactly at that point in the program that the audience might most appreciate music-making that is a bit more intimate – on a smaller, chamber scale.   So from now on,  I hope that the Chamber Singers will always end up at that particular place in the program.
  • Crowd Control . . . .  At both the Friday and Saturday night performances,  there were some adults with special needs sitting in the very front row of the audience.   I remember some years ago when we first had folks like this being brought to the Festival and some of us wondered if there was something we needed to do about it.  Was their presence – and especially their noisiness – a significant distraction to others in the audience?  Or to the musicians?   I’m pretty sure it was Elaine Walton, the coordinator of special events at Carthage,  who very eloquently and firmly stated that we needed to adopt as hospitable an attitude as possible for the sake of our neighbors in the community.  And right up to the present day, they have been welcome.  It does mean some extraneous noise from time to time – applause, for instance,  when the audience is asked to hold their applause until the end of the performance – or gasps or moans or giggles – but for as mildly distracting as the noise can be,  it’s also fun to know that someone is experiencing our performance with that kind of unbridled delight.  (My favorite among these visitors this year was a middle aged man with Down’s Syndrome who sang into some sort of Mr. Microphone toy on all of the audience carols.  What a wonderful sight!)
  • My Favorite Things . . .    There were plenty of highlights on this year’s concert,  and there’s no way I can share a complete list.  It’s also important to note that we are not in Siebert Chapel for the entire performance –  there is no room for us if we are to accommodate our capacity audiences – so there are certain pieces I basically never got to hear, or only heard over the monitor.   Among the great moments was the Women’s Ensemble performance of two movements from Benjamin Britten’s “Ceremony of Carols,” with the heavenly sound of harp as the accompaniment.  I also loved the performance by the Women’s Ensemble and Chapel Choir of Carl Schalk’s “Before the Marvel of this Night,”  a gorgeous piece which I had the chamber singers and women’s ensemble perform together some years ago.  I have already mentioned the wind orchestra’s incredible performance of a Russian Christmas Fantasy.  And of course I was on hand for all of the Carthage Choir’s terrific singing, including their brilliant performance of Jonathan Dove’s “Gloria” with Carthage alum Brian Schoettler playing spectacularly well on the organ.  I had fallen in love with that piece as I played piano for rehearsals,  so to step aside for the performances was not fun- until I heard it with organ for the first time.  Then I realized that it couldn’t possibly be done any other way!   And of course,  the whole closing sequence of Silent Night and O Come all ye Faithful is incredibly moving and powerful.   Friday night I was still in the full throes of my terrible cold and could hardly grunt out a sound.  But Saturday night was a bit better, and by Sunday afternoon I was singing back in my normal octave- if at half my normal volume.  (which the people around me probably appreciated.)
  • Presidential Seal . . .  If anything made this year’s Christmas Festival a bit more stressful or challenging than normal, it was the fact that this was the first Carthage Christmas Festival that our new president,  Dr. Gregory Woodward, would be experiencing.   As someone whose primary field of expertise is music, and as someone whose previous position was as dean of a major music school,  Dr. Woodward was going to be taking in our efforts with a highly discerning ear and eye,  and I think most of us on the faculty were extremely nervous about what he might think.  This is an event near and dear to our hearts,  but what would it seem like to a newcomer?  And we knew from some remarks which the President made to the students before Thursday’s dress rehearsal that he had heard nothing but glorious things about the event since the moment he got to Carthage,  which meant he might be coming to it with sky high expectations.  What if those expectations  were not met?

I am thrilled and relieved to say that President Woodward and his wife Penelope (also a fine musician) loved the Christmas Festival – and seemed to appreciate it both in terms of its musical excellence as well as its spiritual message.   And I suspect that it gave President Woodward a new insight into our department and our incredibly talented and dedicated students.

It is incredibly exciting and gratifying when astute musicians like the Woodwards are impressed,  and give detailed, perceptive compliments that dig so much more deeply than a hundred cheery  “It was wonderful!  As always!”   But this year, for some reason,  I also found myself newly appreciative and thankful for those more amateur compliments. . . newly thankful for the enthusiasm of the ordinary people without music degrees who fill those pews. All it takes is a quick glance at the printed program to realize that the Christmas Festival is anything but a succession of crowd-pleasing favorites.  The repertoire is challenging for performers and audiences alike –  no sign of “O Holy Night,” let alone “Sleigh Ride” or “White Christmas.”  But by and large the audience is with us, taking in what we are offering with rapt attention.  I especially noticed that as the Carthage Choir sang an exquisite but austere piece titled “Hymn to the Virgin” – exactly the kind of piece which would set the typical audience to squirming in their seats, impatiently waiting for something a bit more tuneful and familiar.  But in all three performances,  you could hear a pin drop.   What a gift for those singers to be listened to with such caring attention.  I never want to take that for granted.  Never ever, but especially in this season when we are told of the humble birth of our Savior in a barn.  Even when he are accomplishing great things,  it is not a season for pride – but of humility and gratitude.

pictured above:  Dr. Peter Dennee, director of the Festival, addresses the students at the end of the Thursday dress rehearsal.