With emcee Nora Dunn as tour guide, the musical excursion takes the audience back some eight centuries to Ireland’s Wexford Carol and ahead by a few centuries for traditional carols and villancicos from Provence and Spain, a more contemporary aguinaldo from Venezuela, Gilbert Martin’s Scottish lullaby, Baloo, Lammy (Lullaby, Little Lamb), based on a traditional 17th-centuryth Celtic carol. Swedish composer Gustaf Nordqvist’s 1921 Jul, Jul, Stralande Jul (Christmas, glorious Christmas) evoking the light of Christmas on a snowy landscape.
Winter Fanfare, a new work by conductor Laurie Evan Fraser and lyricist Jacqui Atkin, premieres on the program, contrasts with another premiere, A Dream of Summer, UCC tenor Matthew Secaur’s setting of a poem of optimism by John Greenleaf Whittier.
Cantemos sings two aguinaldos from Venezuela – the contemporary carol, Partamos a Belen (Let's all go to Bethlehem) by one of the choir’s favorite composers, Cesar Alejandro Carrillo, and the Aguinaldo Carupanero, placing the Christmas story in the Caribbean region, with Mary and Joseph seeking a dwelling on the beach while the Three Wise Men drink rum.
