This edition of ON the Beat was originally emailed to subscribers on December 5, 2024. To receive Josef Woodard's music newsletter in your inbox on Fridays, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.
Come December, try as we might, avoiding the sounds and aura of Christmas may be a fool’s errand. Celebrations tied to the season, along with invasive commercial lures and indoctrinations, keep our heads and senses aswim in holiday consciousness — barring an intentional escape plan. For others … might as well give into the feeling and the concert ops, especially if your jam is choral music, that staple of Christmastime culture.
Santa Barbara’s December music calendar is, in some ways, one of the most — and mostly wonderfully — predictable times of the year. This year, choices must be made by the avid yule-tune seeker: The weekend of December 14 and 15 finds a crosstown traffic of programs, between the Santa Barbara Chorale Society’s (SBCS) always-enticing and serial-festive "Hallelujah Project" at the Lobero Theatre, the compelling Nathan Kreitzer–directed a cappella group Quire of Voyces at St. Anthony’s Chapel (nestled in the ever-morphing St. Anthony’s Seminary property). The same weekend, in a shift from its former early December timing, the Westmont College’s 20th annual " Christmas Festival ," this one dubbed "Dwelling Place," returns to The Granada Theatre as a base.
