From the ancients who believed they could fend off winter demons and attendant seasonal miseries with charms of holly, pine, laurel and mistletoe during mid-winter festivals and celebrations; through the Greek and Roman sun worshippers who tried to save the fading winter heat and light by placing candles on evergreen boughs; to the early Jewish and Christian celebrations which, though they evolved from specific religious beliefs, retained many of their earlier pagan customs and gathered ethnic, regional, local and even family traditions along the way; until finally we find ourselves with the patchwork of seasonal customs and festivities that have been woven together into what we today simply term the holiday season.
Also, there is another more personal reason why this concert continues to be what it is - a reason which falls somewhere roughly between local and family traditions. One bracing December afternoon in 1967, a small band of brass players, armed with a stack of homemade carol arrangements, set up on St. Anne's lawn with considerably warmer spirits than feet and proceeded to serenade the passersby. Some might consider this the Annapolis Brass Quintet's unofficial debut - unofficial because they didn't even have a name then and actually numbered six at the time. But in the following years while the Quintet took a name, established itself, began to mature, and started to receive a modest amount of national attention, the annual holiday concerts in Annapolis, now indoors, but otherwise much unchanged, continued. Year after year they continued. And it was, finally at a Christmas concert here at St. Anne's in 1979 that this series was first announced.
So the inclusion each year on the Artists Series of a holiday concert not unlike those the Quintet has always presented just seems right. Each season some of the music changes a little and some stays the same; the program is and always has been, in the kindest term, eclectic. Tonight's concert is at once, like the season itself, reflective of the heterogeneity of our combined traditions, and, in another way, the continuation of and an allusion to a tradition no broader than itself.
Beyond anything else it may be, and perhaps most important of all, this concert is offered each season to friends in the same spirit as that first outdoor carol concert, with all the hope, joy and good will of the holiday season. <Tap to Return>
Also, there is another more personal reason why this concert continues to be what it is - a reason which falls somewhere roughly between local and family traditions. One bracing December afternoon in 1967, a small band of brass players, armed with a stack of homemade carol arrangements, set up on St. Anne's lawn with considerably warmer spirits than feet and proceeded to serenade the passersby. Some might consider this the Annapolis Brass Quintet's unofficial debut - unofficial because they didn't even have a name then and actually numbered six at the time. But in the following years while the Quintet took a name, established itself, began to mature, and started to receive a modest amount of national attention, the annual holiday concerts in Annapolis, now indoors, but otherwise much unchanged, continued. Year after year they continued. And it was, finally at a Christmas concert here at St. Anne's in 1979 that this series was first announced.
So the inclusion each year on the Artists Series of a holiday concert not unlike those the Quintet has always presented just seems right. Each season some of the music changes a little and some stays the same; the program is and always has been, in the kindest term, eclectic. Tonight's concert is at once, like the season itself, reflective of the heterogeneity of our combined traditions, and, in another way, the continuation of and an allusion to a tradition no broader than itself.
Beyond anything else it may be, and perhaps most important of all, this concert is offered each season to friends in the same spirit as that first outdoor carol concert, with all the hope, joy and good will of the holiday season. <Tap to Return>