By Wendy Watkins
If it’s true that there’s no place like home for the holidays, then residents of Mancos and Cortez are especially fortunate this season. The Mancos Valley Chorus is preparing its winter show titled Home for the Holidays, and will give four performances in Mancos and Cortez beginning on Sunday, Dec. 7 in their home venue, the Mancos Methodist Church.
Director Kriss Larsen, a veteran performer and choir director, has assembled a fun and family-oriented seasonal show that runs the gamut from secular to sacred, sentimental to silly.
There’s a whiff of nostalgia against a ’40s backdrop to the show which features lush arrangements of classic tunes such as We’ll Meet Again, I’ll Be Seeing You and I’ll Be Home for Christmas. Explains Larsen, these songs evoke a time when people were separated by “thousands of war-torn miles.” They express a longing for familiar places and faces and remind us of another time, yet they still touch the heart.
Larsen has chosen some lesser-known Christmas pieces which will be a refreshing break from the endless loop of tired Christmas tunes we often hear this time of year. A lilting tune titled Christmas Pipes, a Basque carol The Angel Gabriel from Heaven Came, and a celebratory Jubilate Deo provide counterpoint to the secular half of the show.
A variety of familiar and less familiar songs round out the program. There will be a medley – a signature Larsen move – that features Santa Claus-inspired songs which the children – and the child in you--will love. Also look forward to a clever choral mash-up of We Need A Little Christmas from the Broadway musical Mame sung in an Andrews Sisters style in which Mr. Sandman becomes Mr. Santa. You can almost imagine a U.S.O. show with a trio of leggy blondes selling their songs to a crowd of cheering troops.
True to her winning format, Larsen will intersperse soloists, some seasoned and some new, between choral numbers. Drawing on her background as a theatrical performer, Larsen paints from her musical palette with large brush strokes. She has a concept of the show from beginning to end, and every number adds to the sweep, the flow, of the production. This show, explains Larsen, is much like a pageant or a series of musical tableaux that unify around the theme of hearth and home and holidays.
The Mancos Valley Chorus is 33 voices strong this season. There is one original remaining member of the chorus, Mancos resident Sarah Hatch, who has sung with MVC since the fall of 1998. She loves the camaraderie almost as much as the music. President Ginny Moore has sung with the chorus for several years and keeps returning because, she says, the director injects the experience with fun while challenging her singers with difficult and varied music. Gloria Thatch-Woody, chorus member since 2007, simply states, “It rocks my soul.”