Singers to stage holiday concert

The Columbia County Choral Society is inviting the public to celebrate the holiday season through music.

The choral society's annual concert, Holy Days Concert: Come and Celebrate, is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Friday at First Baptist Church of Evans, on Belair Road at Washington Road.

Susan Osborn, the group's executive director, said this year's 10th annual Christmas concert features special people and music, including Let All Mortal Flesh, arranged by Jack Kearns, who conducted the choral society for its first 10 years.

The program, which will last about an hour and a half, also will feature four pieces of a cantata called God's Promise, by Johnny Carr, a music teacher at Brookwood Elementary School.

Also on the concert program are parts of Antonio Vivaldi's Gloria in D, Osborn said. W. Isaac Holmes, an assistant professor at Paine College, will direct the choir, she said.

"It is some familiar and some that may not be as familiar," Osborn said of the pieces on the concert's program.

Choral society members will sing a fresh arrangement of Dan Kantor's Christmas song Night of Silence. The new arrangement is a multilingual piece including a Spanish verse and the original German text for Silent Night, with soprano Haeng Cha Halstead singing some of the song in Korean.

Tickets cost $15 for adults and $10 for students and seniors. Tickets will be available at the door.

In celebration of Hanukkah, the choral society also will open the concert with Festival of Lights, by David Eddleman.

The holiday concert is the first concert in a series of three. The series will continue in March and will feature the Augusta Chamber Singers and the hand bell choir of First Baptist Church of Sylvania, Ga. The last concert in the series is scheduled for June and will focus on folk music and spirituals.

For more information, call (706) 650-2311.