The Capitol Hill Chorale’s holiday concert, "Strangers in a Strange Land," was performed on Saturday, December 6 at 7:00 PM and Sunday, December 7 at 4:00 PM at the Lutheran Church of the Reformation, 2nd and East Capitol Sts., NE. In program notes, William Grigg framed the concert around travel traditions marked by Christians and Jews alike — shepherds, sailors, wandering wassailers, and the Magi confounding the shepherds with news of a King in a manger — opening with a pagan Travelers’ Prayer sung to the moon and closing with wassailers singing door-to-door for food and drink.
The program also carried a darker thread: two works recalled the Babylonians’ destruction of the Temple and the forced exile of the Jews, including the prophets Daniel and Ezekiel. The notes pointed out that the concert’s own composers had lived that history — Sergei Rachmaninoff fled revolutionary Russia, and Arvo Pärt, then living in Germany and composing in a New Music style echoing the Eastern Orthodox liturgy, had left Soviet-occupied Estonia.
Program
- The Travelers’ Prayer — John Renbourn
- Berliner Messe — Arvo Pärt
- Noe, Noe! Pastores, Cantate Domino — Guillaume Bouzignac
- By the Waters of Babylon — Benedetto Marcello, arr. Hugo Adler
- The Three Kings — Peter Cornelius
- La Marche des Rois — arr. Ron Jeffers
- Out of the Orient, Crystal Skies — Richard Zgodava
- V molitvax neusipayushchuyu Bogoroditsu — Sergei Rachmaninoff
- Nine sili nebesniya — Giuseppe Sarti
- Carols with audience: We Three Kings, I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In, Joy to the World
- Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen — Heinrich Isaac
- Nos Qui Sumus — Orlando di Lasso
- Yorkshire Wassail — traditional
Frederick Binkholder, then in his ninth season as Artistic Director, led the Chorale, joined by Jinsun Cho — who had come aboard as accompanist that February — as Assistant Director.
