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Eight days ago (Friday, 8 December 2023), my students had their annual Christmas Concert.  The Christmas Concert is one of the two marquee concert events of the school year, the other being the more amorphous Spring Concert, which can fall pretty much anywhere between March and April (and even early May).  Of the two, the Christmas Concert is my favorite, and while it’s also one of the most stressful days of the year, it’s also one of my favorites.

Our Christmas Concert follows a predictable format, consisting of performances from our choir, our World Language classes, and finally from my Middle School and High School Music Ensembles.  Historically, dance classes have performed pieces prior to the musical portion of the concert, but this year marked the first that dances were not included, as the dance class performed before the Christmas Musical, which was on Friday, 1 December 2023.

Honestly, excluding dances was a major improvement.  I have nothing (well, not much) against dance as an art form, but it was never a comfortable fit in an already-overstuffed Christmas concert format.  It also adds some minor additional headaches for yours portly, who in the past has had to move pianos in the middle of the concert to accommodate the dancers.  At the risk of editorializing (but isn’t that the whole point of a blog?), I find most of these “dance” routines to be rather distasteful and a tad lurid, although I am to report that this year’s dance performance was really exceptional, tasteful, and beautiful.

But I digress.  What of the music itself?  Let’s dig in, like a Wisconsin dad shoveling snow.

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