The NIHCO Board of Directors

Harold Seifried President The NIH Community Timothy Doerr Vice President and Robin Petrusak Treasurer The NIH Community Chorus Nancy Henderson Secretary present Liane Toohey Communications

With thanks to

Gary Daum, Founding Music Director Eileen (Teddi) Pensinger, Publicity and Outreach Maria Barragan Santana, Membership and Publicity Sara Kane, Program Design and Coordination Karin Caifa, Reception Coordination Jeff Beer and John Pensinger, Front of House The NIH R&W Staff The NIHCO Brass Ensemble Saint Mark Presbyterian Church Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church And to our generous donors Freda Balkan Karin Caifa Gary Daum Timothy Doerr A Winter Fantasy Cheryl Fisher featuring music from the British Isles Nancy Henderson and Ivars Peterson Nancy Jakubowski December 10, 2016 Henry B. and Jessie W. Keiser Foundation, Inc. JoAnn Lynn Janet Mahaney Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church Clifford Schweinfest Bethesda, MD The NIH Community OrchestraJohn is supported Warshawsky in part by funding from the Montgomery County government and the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County

The NIH Community Orchestra Music Director and Conductor, Richard Scerbo About the NIH Musical Organizations Assistant Conductor, Philip Espe

The NIH Community Orchestra (NIHCO) is an all- Violin I Ivars Peterson Ed Kaita volunteer organization founded in the fall of 1996 for the Heather MacArthur, Elena Thompson Carole Read Concertmaster purpose of bringing together the musical talent of NIH Cello Bass and the surrounding community. Since then, the orchestra Tom Holzman Jenna Johnson David Berley Ed Kaita has played music spanning six centuries, and is now a Carolyn Carroll Jakub Kostal regular participant in the arts community of Montgomery Cheryl Fisher Sacha de Lange Steve Wechsler County. Serri Graslie Karin Peeters Keli Edwards Nancy Jakubowsky The group presents three concerts a year (two with the NIH Ellen Snyder Rachel Willingham Liane Toohey Erin McGown Community Chorus), as well as a number of outreach Ashley Valentine Tom Zebowitz performances. Donations collected at today's concert Doug Fox Bass benefit NIH charities, including the Children’s Inn at NIH, Violin II Steve Heilberg Fred Talcott Friends of the Clinical Center, the Patient Emergency Fund, Freda Balkan Stan Kusnetz and Special Love, Inc./Camp Fantastic, which provides a Maria Barragan Santana Harold Seifried week-long summer camp and may other programs for Candy Cheung Ellen Ensel Alyson Williams children and young adults with cancer and their families. Stephanie Dailey Nancy Henderson Moyna Daley Sara Kane Jon Gang For more information, please visit our website at Kristi Johnson Piccolo Ken Nolan www.nihco.org. Leslie Klein Ellen Ensel Cliff Schweinfest Basil Manns The NIH Community Chorus (NIHCC) was also founded Kenneth Mirkin in 1996, when the Bethesda Little Theatre began its Anthea Piong Katie Kane Brian Albrecht collaboration with the NIHCO to perform a sing-along of Emily Storch Daryl Kaufman Allan Bowling Handel’s Messiah. Since then, the all-volunteer chorus has Karen Weinstein Jo Ann Lynn Steve Ferguson participated in 17 sing-along Messiahs, as well as other Caitlin Williams Robin Petrusak Kevin Flynn concerts with the NIHCO, including the Holiday Concert Barbara Zain Liz Townsend last December and Howard Hanson’s Song of Democracy last June. Viola English Horn Dale Kiesewetter Timothy Doerr Robin Petrusak The NIHCC welcomes singers in all voice parts. For Percussion Clara Fisher more information, please visit our website at Clarinet Caitlin Williams Jack Karsten www.nihco.org. Karin Caifa Lee Rucker Keiser Harp Michelle Escumbise Cover: Christmas Eve in the Village Pamela Klein Melanie Young Stanley Cooke

The NIH Community Chorus Music Director, W. Robert Johnson Program Soprano Sara Kane Sally Amero Carol Meyers Lynn Balabanis Barbara Moschella (1882 – 1961) Betsy Ballard Eileen Pensinger Alison Bennett Joanna Pratt Fantasia on Christmas Carols Ralph Vaughan Williams Rose Berstein Terri Reiskin (1872 – 1958) Diana Hurley Bobbi Sachs Baritone Soloist, Tshegofatso Moeng Mary Kirby Tenor A Selection of Christmas Carols Ana Astrid Molina Don Dillin The Cedar Lane Waits Tina Neilson K. David Hulteng Toni Robison Gloucestershire Wassail Traditional Tom Robbins Terri Sorota Carol of the Bells Traditional, arranged by Kathie Rogers Peter J. Wihousky Mary Lou Steptoe Joyce Rosenthal The Star Carol Alfred Burt Kathie Van Aalten Lee Webber (1920 – 1954) Alto Shepherds, What Fragrance Traditional Bass Mary Adams Come, Dear Children Alfred Burt Igor Baumann Laura Ariovich Bob Berendt Miriam Bunow Intermission Tom Dine Angeline Butler Tom Kirby Nancy Clark Fantasia on “Greensleeves” Ralph Vaughan Williams Harold Seifried Linda Edwards Bruce Weber Miriam Goldberg , An English Rhapsody Frederick Delius Lynne Gots Accompanist (1862 – 1934) Lucy Hand Judith Bourzutschky Pomp and Circumstance March, No. 4 Edward Elgar Helen Ingalls (1957 – 1934)

Program Notes Conductor, clarinetist, and educator Philip Espe is the assistant conductor of the NIHCO. In addition to his duties with the For our holiday concert, we are featuring music of the British Isles, composed NIHCO, Mr. Espe manages the Children's Orchestra, during the early years of the twentieth century. During this period, there was an El Sistema inspired music education initiative serving four a resurgence of interest in one of the richest veins of English music—the folk Title 1 schools in Washington, DC, and serves as a staff song. This interest, happily, coincided with the development of recording conductor for the DC Youth Orchestra Program. Recent technology capable of reproducing these songs, often sung by the last conducting highlights include serving as a 2015-2016 Chicago surviving inheritors of the oral tradition. In fact, two of our composers— Sinfonietta Project Inclusion Freeman Conducting Fellow, a Ralph Vaughan Williams and Percy Grainger—spent years researching, performance at the Argentine Embassy in celebration of compiling, and recording these gems, bequeathing to us a permanent archive Argentina's bicentennial, and guest conducting the of the oral tradition that would otherwise have been lost. Northwestern University Philharmonia. Mr. Espe holds a

Colonial Song Master of Music in Orchestral Conducting from Northwestern Percy Grainger University, an Artist Diploma in Conducting from San Diego Grainger was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist. In the State University, and a Bachelor of Music in Clarinet course of a long and innovative career he played a prominent role in the Performance from DePaul University. revival of interest in British in the early years of the 20th century. In 1905, Grainger began to collect original folksongs. Starting at Brigg in Baritone Tshegofatso Moeng, from Johannesburg, South Lincolnshire, over the next five years he gathered and transcribed more than Africa, is currently pursuing a Master of Music in Opera 300 songs from all over the country, including much material that had never Performance at the University of Maryland as a member of the been written down before. From 1906, Grainger used a phonograph, one of the Maryland Opera Studio. He holds a Bachelor of Music in Vocal first collectors to do so, and by this means he assembled more than 200 Edison Performance and Composition from University of the cylinder recordings of native folk singers. Colonial Song began life as a piano solo. Grainger wrote it in 1911 as a gift to Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He made his operatic debut in his mother, Rose. It represents a comparatively rare instance of Grainger the chorus of Maryland Opera Studio’s 2015 spring production relying on an original melody rather than extant folk sources. of Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortileges. In the upcoming season, he will be involved in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Blitzstein’s Regina Fantasia on Christmas Carols with Maryland Opera Studio, and Verdi’s La Traviata with Ash Ralph Vaughan Williams Lawn Opera. He was a finalist in UMD’s Concerto Competition A major figure in the revival of folk music, Ralph Vaughan Williams began for 2015 and the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship in 2016 to to collect, arrange, and publish English folk tunes as early as 1903, which made study in the United States. Other awards from University of him a pioneer in the field of ethnomusicology, and he catalogued some the Witwatersrand include the Elizabeth Cornell Prize and the 800 folk tunes during his lifetime. His own compositions were heavily SAMRO Vocal Prize. influenced both by traditional folk music and the music of the late English Renaissance masters like Thomas Tallis and William Byrd. A note about Waits. From medieval times up to the early 19th- The Fantasia on Christmas Carols is based on three English carols which century, every British town and city had a band of “waites,” whose Vaughan Williams himself had collected: The Truth Sent From Above, Come All duties included playing their instruments through the town at night, You Worthy Gentlemen (the Somerset Carol), and On Christmas Night (the Sussex waking the townsfolk on dark winter mornings by playing under Carol). It was first performed in 1912, at the Hereford Cathedral as part of the their windows, and leading the mayor’s procession on civic occasions. Three Festival. This festival dates back to 1719, and originally featured Although waits were abolished in 1835, their name lingered on as one from the three cathedrals located in the English counties, Hereford, Christmas waits—a group of musicians who banded together to play Gloucester, and Worcester. and sing carols for money or refreshments around their town over the Christmas period. In keeping with the English theme of this concert, the NIH Community Chorus will be performing an assortment of About our Directors Fantasia on “Greensleeves” Richard Scerbo (Music Director and Conductor, NIHCO) maintains Ralph Vaughan Williams an active schedule as a conductor, performer, teacher, and arts “Greensleeves” has been around since at least the 16th century. administrator. Shakespeare mentions it twice in The Merry Wives of Windsor, and it In 2004, he founded the Inscape Chamber Orchestra with the intent appeared widely throughout the 17th century in both song and lute of introducing audiences to diverse chamber and ensemble repertoire. publications. Vaughan Williams used the tune several times, most This unique brand of programming has made Inscape one of the most notably in his opera, Sir John in Love. In 1934, Ralph Greaves grafted exciting ensembles in the Washington metropolitan area. Under passages from various previous Vaughan Williams incarnations— Mr. Scerbo’s leadership, Inscape has commissioned and premiered especially from Sir John in Love—of the familiar tune and created the Fantasia on “Greensleeves.” over twenty-five new works. Mr. Scerbo co-founded his first orchestra, The Philharmonia Brigg Fair, an English Rhapsody Ensemble, in 2000 while studying at the University of Maryland. Frederick Delius As Music Director, he led the orchestra in a series of diverse programs Delius was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, England, to parents who had that included collaborations with artists such as pianist Rita Sloan, come to England from Germany. Delius spent little time in England, soprano Carmen Balthrop, and the Prism Brass Quintet. spending some years running an orange plantation in Florida, studying Mr. Scerbo holds a Master of Music degree from the University of in Leipzig, and eventually settling down in the north of France. A Maryland where he studied conducting with James Ross and bassoon meeting with Percy Grainger led to the composition of Brigg Fair, an with Daniel Matsukawa, Sue Heineman, and Linda Harwell. He has English Rhapsody. Grainger had made a setting of the Lincolnshire song “Brigg Fair” for solo tenor and chorus. When Delius first met Grainger attended conducting programs in Austria and the Czech Republic, in 1907, Grainger urged him to compose an orchestral work on the tune, working both with the International Festival Orchestra, Kromeriz, and Delius responded with this work. Delius’s composition treats the and the Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic. tune to a series of variations, encompassing lilting rhythmic dances, funereal marches, gently pastoral moments, and full grand statements. W. Robert Johnson (Music Director, NIHCC) has had a long and varied association with choral music. Beginning in Kansas, he sang in choirs and Pomp and Circumstance March, No. 4 choruses for more than 50 years. Although he chose a career in the military and Edward Elgar government service, he conducted choirs and choruses wherever his assignments The first English composer of international stature since Henry Purcell, took him. Elgar is esteemed both for his own music and for his role in heralding the 20th-century English musical renaissance. Among his many notable In 1971, while employed by the National Security Agency, compositions are The Enigma Variations and The Dream of Gerontius. he organized the Parkway Chorale and served as its Music Director The Pomp and Circumstance marches were composed during the first until he retired from federal service in 1998. decade of the twentieth century--the high noon of the British Empire. He founded The New Century Singers in 1975 and sang in the Washington Elgar once declared that part of the role he saw for himself as a Cathedral Choral Society for 28 years, serving on the composer was to write music which stirred the popular imagination, Society’s Board of Trustees for 16+ years. tunes to accompany pageantry, and to have, as Shakespeare had Othello As a member of the American Choral Directors Association, he served say, “all the quality, pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war.” as the President of the District of Columbia Chapter. In 2003, he was appointed the Elgar himself conducted the first performance of the fourth Pomp and ACDA National Chair for Community Choirs, retiring in June 2009. Circumstance March in 1907. In September 2009, he was appointed Chorus Master of the NIHCC, a position he currently fills, in addition to serving as the Music Director of The East Avenue Ensemble. In September 2012, he was appointed director of the Asbury Village Encore Chorale

Texts

Fantasia on Christmas Carols God bless our generation Carol of the Bells Come, Dear Children This Is the Truth Sent from Above Who live both far and near; This is the truth sent from above Hark how the bells, sweet silver bells Come, dear children, don't be The truth of God, the God of love O we wish you the comfort and tidings of joy! All seem to say, throw cares away dallying, Therefore don't turn me from your door .The Sussex Carol Christmas is here, bringing good cheer All the family now is rallying, But hearken all both rich and poor. Filling the air Not a moment now to spare, On Christmas night all Christians sing The first thing which I will relate To hear the news the angels bring. Oh how they pound, raising the sound Joyful haste is in the air. Is that God did man create News of great joy, news of great mirth, While people sing There are nuts to crack The next thing which to you I'll tell News of our merciful King's birth. To young and old, meek and the bold And candies to make, Woman was made with man to dwell. Ding dong ding dong And birds to stuff When sin departs before His grace, Then after this, 'twas God's own choice That is their song And cookies to bake. To place them both in Paradise, Then life and health come in its place. Words of good cheer, from everywhere There's many and many a thing There to remain of evil free Angels and men with joy may sing With joyful ring, all caroling to do, Except they ate of such a tree. All for to see the new-born King. O'er hill and dale, telling their tale Which we have done before. For Christmas, blessed Christmas And they did eat, which was a sin, From out of darkness we have light, Gaily they ring Is here once more! And thus their ruin did begin, Which made the angels sing this night: Songs of good cheer, Christmas is here

Ruined themselves, both you and me, "Glory to God and peace to men, Merry Christmas, And all of their posterity. Now begins a mighty scurrying, Now and for evermore, Amen!" On, on they send, on without end Thus we were heirs to endless woes Their joyful tone. Each to do his task is hurrying, Carols of the Cedar Lane Waits All to finish he contrives, Till God the Lord did interpose The Star Carol Ere the glorious day arrives. And so a promise soon did run Gloucester Wassail Long years ago, on a deep winter night. That He would redeem us by His Son. There are gifts to wrap Wassail! wassail! All over the town, High in the heavens, a star shone bright. And cards to write, The Somerset Carol Our bread it is white and our ale it is brown; While in the manger, a wee baby lay. And secrets kept with great delight, Come all you worthy gentlemen Our bowl it is made of the green maple tree; Sweetly asleep, on a bed of hay. That may be standing by. There's many and many a mystery With the wassailing bowl, we’ll drink unto Christ our blessed Saviour Jesus our lord, was that baby so small. Behind each closet door. thee. Was born on Christmas day. Lay down to sleep, in a humble stall. For Christmas, blessed Christmas The blessed virgin Mary Come butler, come fill us a bowl of the best Then came the star, and it stood over- Is here once more! Unto the Lord did pray, Then we hope that your soul in heaven may rest; head. O we wish you the comfort and tidings of joy! But if you do draw us a bowl of the small Shedding its light, 'round his little bed. O was there ever such a jolly day? Christ our blessed Saviour Then down shall go butler, bowl and all. Now in the manger lay; Shepherds, What Fragrance Fam'lies gathered for the holiday. He's lying in the manger, Then here's to the maid in the lily white smock Shepherds, what fragrance, Home is filled with dancing eyes, While the oxen feed on hay. Who tripped to the door and slipped back the lock All perfuming Laughter, love and glad surprise. The blessed Virgin Mary Who tripped to the door and pulled back the pin Sweetly our senses now doth seize There are friends to see Unto the Lord did pray. For to let these jolly wassailers come in. Did ever flowers at springtide And prayers to say, O we wish you the comfort and tidings of joy! Blooming And songs to sing in roundelay,

God bless the ruler of this house, Breathe for such balmy scents as these. There's many a lovely memory And long on may he reign; Of Christmastides of yore. Many happy Christmases For Christmas, blessed Christmas He live to see again! Is here once more!