It’s time once again for Fort Wayne’s professional choir, Heartland Sings, under the direction of Maestro Robert Nance, to present their take on the true meaning of Christmas in song, with their 11th annual production of The Spirit of Christmas. 

Heartland Sings bring 25 singing voices into the unusual setting of the rotunda of the Allen County Courthouse for three performances, Dec. 20-22. The focus of the concert is Christmas carols, traditional and new.

Caroling history

Christmas carols might be the perfect antidote for the seasonal pop music that saturates the airwaves, the PA at the mall, and your dentist’s waiting room around this time. 

There’s nothing wrong with holiday pop songs, mind you, but carols are traditional, sacred music. Fundamentally, a carol is a song that tells the Christmas story. Most carols are centuries old; they started as folk songs, sung by the people, first out in the community and later in church. Carols come from all over the world, written and sung in many different languages.

Over the years, those Christmas folk songs have been collected and arranged by composers for congregations and choirs. But not all carols are folk songs whose original songwriters are lost to time. In relatively recent years, composers have written new, original pieces for choirs that have become accepted as carols also.

Classics to originals

When a group sings carols, it ties the present day to celebrations going back through the centuries, connecting us to many cultures and traditions. 

This year, Heartland Sings will present songs from several of those: not only from the U.S. and England, but also Germany, Austria, France, Spain, and Puerto Rico. A few will be sung in their original languages, but most will be in the English translations that audiences in this country are more familiar with.

I spoke with Natalie Young, associate artistic director, who is also a soprano soloist with the group. This is Heartland Sings’ 28th season, and Young’s seventh year with the group. Next season, she will assume the mantle of artistic director when Nance retires.

The Spirit of Christmas “is choral music,” she said, “but it ranges everywhere from more classical to ethereal, to almost pop.”

Putting on a concert in the 122-year-old Allen County Courthouse rotunda is a unique proposition in itself. It’s a huge, domed space, 255 feet high, and elaborately decorated. While it wasn’t designed for concerts, Heartland Sings know how to fill it with sound. 

“We choose pieces that fit really well in that space acoustically,” Young said. “So, you get really thick choral textures.”

About half of the concert will be a cappella, for the rest, they’ll be accompanied by Joseph Platt on piano and Alex McCrory on bassoon.

Because of the unusual acoustics, “generally, we have to take the tempos slower once we get in the space,” Young explained. 

The hall and its long reverberation lends itself to the ethereal sacred textures the choir creates.

“We try and get a good mix of traditional carols that people know, and then some new things, whether they’re brand-new creations or pieces that you might not know about but are just gorgeous and rarely sung,” Young said.

You’ll hear traditional songs in contemporary arrangements, some well-known to churchgoers. However, several arrangements are by Nance, written for Heartland Sings.

They’ll sing the Spanish carols “A la nanita nana” and “Campanas de Belen,” and the Puerto Rican carol “Alegria,” in the original Spanish.

You’ll hear the ancient folk carols “Quelle est cette odeur agréable” and “Il est né, le divin Enfant” in the original French. Traditional congregations in this country sing those carols in English. You’ll also hear the great French anthem “O Holy Night,” written by Adolphe Adam in 1852, but I’m personally disappointed to tell you that they’ll sing it in English. I suppose relatively few people in this country are even aware that it’s a French song.

From the German-language tradition, there’s the Austrian carol “Still, still, still” and the 19th-century German carol “Silent Night,” but the latter, I believe, will be in English, too.

On the “pop” side, Young points to “Do You Hear What I Hear,” which was written in the U.S. in 1962, in the days before rock n’ roll took over the airwaves and choirs were featured in pop music hits year-round. Heartland Sings will be performing a new arrangement by Nance.

Every Christmas, Heartland Sings feature original pieces composed by Nance as well. This year they’ll sing his “Can You Hear the Bells,” “What’s Going on This Christmas,” and a premiere, the brand-new “Christmas Is.”

I’m looking forward to the newest “classical” pieces on the program, written in the 21st century. First is an original take on “Dona nobis pacem” by Norwegian composer Frode Fjellheim. They’ll also perform “Carol of the Magi” by probably the greatest living British composer of Christmas carols, John Rutter.

The audience will be invited to sing along on some folk carols from the British tradition that we all know by heart: “The First Noel,” “Away in a Manger,” and “O Come All Ye Faithful.” You can likewise join in on “Joy to the World” and the German folk song “O Christmas Tree.”

Unique choir

Heartland Sings are practically unique among vocal groups in this country. This is because, as an independent nonprofit group, they provide full-time, permanent jobs for their principal singers, and bring in as many as 40 professional part-time singers depending on the concert or the project. 

Heartland Sings runs  as a year-round business in Fort Wayne with a full-time staff and a music school with vocal arts workshops for students.

Next up, on March 15-16, they’ll present this season’s Celtic Landscapes, an original production of Irish and Scottish music with folk tunes, ballads, drinking songs, and a live Celtic band at Bergstaff Place, 2020 E. Washington Blvd.

For more information or to get tickets, go to heartlandsings.org.