Photo by Thomas Hsu
Only in their second season, Fremont's Mission Peak Chamber Singers are reprising their "Renaissance Holiday” on Dec. 6 and 7 in Old Mission San Jose, with music from the late Renaissance and early Baroque.
As chorus director and conductor Michael Morris speaks about the concert, numbers become puzzling until all facts are in. Yes, it is the group's second year, but Morris says:
2014 marks the 29th annual Christmas at the Mission Concert at the historic old Mission San Jose in Fremont. The Chamber Singers were formerly the Ohlone Chamber Singers, and they established this annual concert. I became the director in 2010, and the Chamber Singers became an independent non-profit organization in 2013.
Mission Peak Chamber Singers is a 35-voice auditioned choir performing a wide range of choral pieces throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.
The year 1590 is the center for the repertoire for the holiday concert. There is some antiphonal music, such as in the Gabrieli Hodie Christus Natus Est, and then works by Gabrieli, Praetorius, Palestrina, and others. Period instrument ensemble Bona Speranza joins the performance. Of the venue, Morris says: "The acoustics in the Mission are amazing, so I wanted to present music that reflected the early days of the Mission."
Mission San Jose was founded in 1797 by Father Fermin Francisco de Lasuen on a site which was part of a natural highway by way of the Livermore Valley to the San Joaquin Valley. It is the 14th of the 21 Spanish Missions in Alta California, all founded to secure Spain's claim to the land and to teach the native people Christianity and the Spanish way of life.