On Saturday, November 9th, the BASH Show Choir performed a holiday concert with the Reading Symphony at the Santander Performing Arts Center, in Reading PA.
The concert, which consisted of the BASH Show choir, the Reading Symphony Orchestra, and Timothy McDevitt, an opera singer raised in Reading, received a well deserved standing ovation at the end.
The songs performed were “Christmas Overture,” “Carol of the Bells,” “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” “The Christmas Song,” “White Christmas,” “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” “Rejoice,” “I’ll be Home For Christmas,” “Sleigh Ride,” “Festival Fanfare for Christmas,” “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch,” “I Saw Three Ships,” “O Holy Night,” “The Polar Express,” “Hallelujah Chorus” from “The Messiah,” “Troika” from “Lieutenant Kijé,” and “A Holly and Jolly Sing-Along!”
The Reading Symphony Orchestra director, Andrew Constantine, “serves as Music Director of both the Fort Wayne Philharmonic and the Reading Symphony Orchestra.” He was born in England, and came to the US in 2004 to conduct with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Since then, he’s conducted with many orchestras throughout the country.
The performance also featured guest singer Timothy McDevitt, who’s “established himself among the industry’s most versatile young performers of today.” McDevitt’s experienced in musical theater, along with opera, after getting his graduate degree from The Juilliard School.
A performance like this one takes a lot of practice. According to Hannah Paul, a member of the show choir at BASH, “We showed up a couple days before [December 9th], [Andrew Constantine] came and listened to us sing a couple of our songs. He gave us a few pointers,” she said. “And then we went on Saturday, we researched for a couple of hours with the orchestra, and then we had a nice break, we rehearsed a little bit more for the second half, and then we had another break, than we changed and performed, it was really cool.”
If you’d like to see the BASH show choir, concert choir, or voces excelsis choir, along with the orchestra, now’s the time! They have their annual winter concert this Thursday, December 13th, at BASH. Anyone is welcome, no tickets/payment needed to enter. They also have their spring concert later this school year.
