{"id":192,"date":"2010-12-14T18:30:34","date_gmt":"2010-12-15T01:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/midwestmotet.org\/?p=192"},"modified":"2010-12-14T18:30:34","modified_gmt":"2010-12-15T01:30:34","slug":"making-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/midwestmotet.org\/?p=192","title":{"rendered":"Making Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>I haven&#8217;t been around for the last few weeks.  You see, after our November 7 concert, I had to switch gears in a matter of days and get ready for a Christmas concert.  Oh sure, I had the music chosen some time in August, but had to rehearse and get all the little bits and pieces together.  And this was a paying gig for a local organization, so we wanted it to be good. The program had to be excellant and, for events such as this, I write a script to introduce the music and history to our audience, most of whom have no idea what a chamber choir is.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I take Christmas music seriously, no matter how light hearted and &#8216;fun&#8217; it is.  I believe choral musicians, more than others, really create Christmas, whether we lead music in a church setting or a school concert or, like our performance, a community concert.  The music must be chosen carefully and must include something familar, something meaningful and something out of the ordinary.  And of course, something fun!<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Our concert included many familar carols as well as three of the Alfred Burt Carols.  It was a magical concert and I was so happy we had the opportunity to do it in this venue.  After the concert, I received several emails telling me how much they enjoyed our program.  And how our concert really made Christmas.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I haven&#8217;t been around for the last few weeks. You see, after our November 7 concert, I had to switch gears in a matter of days and get ready for a Christmas concert. Oh sure, I had the music chosen some time in August, but had to rehearse and get all the little bits and &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/midwestmotet.org\/?p=192\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Making Christmas<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/midwestmotet.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/midwestmotet.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/midwestmotet.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midwestmotet.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midwestmotet.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/midwestmotet.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":193,"href":"http:\/\/midwestmotet.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions\/193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/midwestmotet.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midwestmotet.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midwestmotet.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}