FullScore Chamber Orchestra announces its Christmas concert
FullScore Chamber Orchestra announces “The Light Has Come,” its annual Christmas celebration concerts featuring the one-act opera “Amahl and the Night Visitors” and holiday music of Manheim Steamroller.
FullScore is a professional ensemble whose mission includes tutoring advanced students and community artists among their ranks. Artistic Director Ron Arden, also music director of the Lake Forest Civic Orchestra, will be at the podium leading professional singers in a concert version of “Amahl and the Night Visitors.”
FullScore has become known in Lake County for having a regular and exquisite reading of this work.
Eleven-year-old Christian Englhardt will sing the title boy soprano role for the third time with the orchestra. Leslie Larosee will sing the mother, Joshua Poucher the page, and the three kings are Nikolas Arden, Chris Englhardt (father to Christian), and Loren Buntrock.
The shepherds chorus are singers from St. Paul the Apostle Church in Gurnee and other local church choirs.
This touching work by opera composer Carlo Menotti is the second most performed music at Christmas after Handel’s “Messiah,” and the most performed opera of all time. Set in the desert, it is a tale of a crippled shepherd boy and widowed mother who live alone and are quite poor. One evening Amahl is entranced by a star in the sky and after bedding down for the night, in spite his mother’s skepticism, strangers following the star pay them a visit. The rest attendees must hear for themselves.
Partnering with Ruth Peck, music director at St. Paul the Apostle, FullScore presents several other events in the sanctuary there. Members of the choir join the orchestra for the Christmas concerts and are prepared by Peck.
Also on the program are orchestral settings of carols by Chip Davis from Mannheim Steamroller. True to form, these pieces evoke the spirit of Christmas. Full of percussion, harp, strings, brass, and keyboards, Davis splashes color into the Christmas season that has become a holiday staple all over the world.
The two concerts are both at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Dec 13, at St. Paul the Apostle Church, 6401 Gages Lake Road, Gurnee, and Saturday, Dec. 14, at Grace Missionary Church, 1415 27th St., Zion.
Tickets are $10 and can be purchased at the door or reserved ahead by calling (847) 746-3472. Children younger than 12 are admitted for free. For details, visit www.fullscore.org.