William Grant Still (1895-1978)
By Jim Ruggirello
Music Critic
Music Critic
December 22, 2017
There are all kinds of Christmas concerts.
And the other
evening at Grace First Presbyterian Church, Long Beach Chorale once
again served up their specialty, a “Festival of Carols” that
acknowledged tradition while exploring interesting corners of the
contemporary repertoire.
Artistic director Eliza Rubenstein has
long been a champion of new music, and she has a particular gift for
structuring a program of new and interesting compositions and
arrangements that don’t scare anyone off. If this program was, to quote
an introductory speaker, “mostly things you’ve never heard before,” the
audience still came away with that warm fuzzy Christmas feeling.
William Grant Still, the other big name on the program, was a jazz
arranger as well as a composer, and it showed in the sweet, simple “Glad
Christmas Bells” as well as the spiritual-like “Shout! Shout! Tell the
Story,” from his “Christmas in the Western World.”
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