Behind the Scenes at Christmas

by Maestro Lawrence Eckerling

Anyone who has attended An Evanston Symphony Christmas has enjoyed the results of a collaboration between many different performing organizations, and has seen and heard how putting it all together has created an entertaining afternoon of music for all ages.

My first important decision is planning which performing groups will participate. Dance and singing are both strong traditions for the holidays in general and for our Christmas concert, and we are fortunate that for the third consecutive year the ESO will be joined by the North Shore Choral Society, the Evanston Dance Ensemble, and the Evanston Children’s Choir.

Then we have to choose the music. I try to program a mixture of traditional fare: some on the “classical” side, and some on the “pops” side of Christmas music. I also try to find either new music for the holidays or new arrangements of familiar songs to mix with the traditional Christmas favorites.

There is a huge amount of Christmas music published for symphony orchestra. Most of it is printed so that as many school groups can play this music as possible (and the publishers can make their money). Usually this music is purposefully easy to play, and as a result rarely sounds exciting. But when looking for high quality music that sounds fantastic, one has to find the wonderful arrangers and orchestrators who create this material. It does take some research, but if done carefully and thoroughly, one can find some really wonderful choices.

The next step is to arrive at a consensus with the directors of the choral and dance groups on the music they would like to perform with the orchestra. This is where the collaboration is extremely important between all of the performing organizations.

Finally, I have to create a concert order that takes into account the musical flow of the selections, but also the logistics of moving people on and off the stage. For example, I have to make sure that there are sufficient minutes of music between two dance numbers for a dancer who is performing in more than one number to change costumes!

But it’s worth the effort, because in the end we consistently achieve an extraordinary and enjoyable afternoon of music and dance.