R. Scott Reedy
David Chase’s imaginative arrangement of the English carol “The Twelve Days of Christmas” – featuring a musical mélange of everything from Beethoven’s Fifth, “The Magic Flute,” and “Oklahoma!” to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” and more – is a Holiday Pops perennial.
The 18th century song, best known from its 1909 arrangement by composer Frederic Austin, is beloved not only by audiences but also by the Boston Pops and Tanglewood Festival Chorus, who perform it for them every year.
“My favorite holiday number to do with the Chorus is the 2007 Chase version of ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas,’ written for the Boston Pops,” said chorus member David Norris, of Marshfield, by telephone recently. “It’s an interactive piece and we have a lot of fun with it.”
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Led by Boston Symphony Orchestra choral director and conductor James Burton, the all-volunteer chorus will be performing Holiday Pops concerts, under the baton of Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart, through Dec. 24 at Boston’s Symphony Hall.
Norris, who is marking his 42nd year with the chorus, is one of five members from the South Shore, including Eric Chan, Destiny Cooper, Sarah Labrie and Judy Stafford, all of Quincy.
Labrie recalls being “absolutely flabbergasted” by “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” which she first performed with the Pops soon after joining the chorus in November 2018.
“Once you learn the arrangement, it is always in your head. Now, if I had to, I could sing it in July,” she said with a laugh by telephone recently from her Quincy home.
Norris also has fond, if more distant, memories of his start with the chorus.
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“Choral singing has been a fiber through my life since the age of 8 when I started doing church choir duets with my brother,” he said.
Since then, Norris has sung with the chorus at North Community Church in Marshfield, with the Marshallaires at Marshfield High School, with the UMass Chorale and the Chamber Singers Madrigal Group at UMass-Amherst, and, since 1980, with Tanglewood Festival Chorus.
“When I joined TFC, I could hardly believe that the opportunity to sing with the BSO in a world-class symphonic chorus was even real. I applied to a newspaper ad, auditioned and was invited to join the chorus,” Norris said. “And I’ve never looked back.”
When Norris joined the chorus, the Boston Symphony Orchestra was about to record Mahler’s 8th Symphony, which called for a double chorus, under the direction of then-symphony conductor Seiji Ozawa in live recording sessions at Symphony Hall and at Carnegie Hall.
Since then, Norris has sung with Tanglewood Festival Chorus on other Boston Symphony Orchestra recordings including Ravel’s “Daphnis and Chloe,” which won the 2010 Grammy Award for best orchestral performance, and on film soundtracks by composer and former Boston Pops conductor, now-conductor laureate, John Williams, including 1984’s “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and 1998’s “Saving Private Ryan.”
On tour with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, Norris has also performed at European Music Festivals in London; Paris; Edinburgh, Scotland; and Lucerne, Switzerland.
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This month, however, the calendar is all Holiday Pops concerts, which feature the annual performances of “’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” and Leroy Anderson’s “Sleigh Ride,” as well as the return of the always popular sing-along for the first time since 2019.
New this season are “On Christmas Night,” composed by James Burton, Arturo Rodríguez’s musical imagining of “Noche de Posadas,” featuring narration and imagery from author and illustrator Tomie dePaola’s children’s book “Night of the Posadas,” and a timely, touching counterpoint of traditional Ukrainian carols, “Dobryy vechir tobi” and “Carol of the Bells.”
Sung in Ukrainian, the carols have added yet another language to the already lengthy TFC repertoire.
“I’ve learned a dozen or so languages over the years,” Norris said. “This year, in addition to Ukrainian, we’ll also be doing ‘Ma’oz Tzur’ (‘Rock of Ages’) and ‘Drey Dreydeleh’ in Yiddish.”
Labrie – a choral director at Stoughton High School and director of the Quincy Choral Society, which will present its annual holiday concert at 4 p.m. Dec. 18 at St. Mary of the Hills in Milton – said she believes that the work that Tanglewood Festival Chorus puts in to learning foreign language diction is worth the effort.
“We learn the literal and poetic translation for every piece we learn in a foreign language. The literal translation is important to knowing what you’re singing, particularly at climactic moments,” Labrie said. “Oftentimes the literal translation will read as out of order, though, so the poetic is also important because it reads much more elegantly to the native English speaker.”
And while Labrie cites Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song” – included in the Pops sing-along – as a personal favorite, she’s also quite fond of one of the Ukrainian carols.
“‘Dobryy vechir tobi’ is a jovial song of welcoming, like the English ‘Here We Come A-Wassailing,’” she said. “It’s our featured piece this season and the only one we sing a cappella.”
Whatever language is required, Norris says he will be happy to be at home this month, performing at Holiday Pops concerts including one he is anticipating most.
“My favorite Holiday Pops concert this year will be the Dec. 22 matinee because I’ll have my family in the audience. One of my grandsons, Harry, 11, is traveling from London, while another, Walker, 13, is coming in from Alabama,” Norris said.
“It will also be the first concert for two of my other grandchildren, 4½-year-old Bennie and 6½-year-old Susana,” Norris said. “With so many family members on hand, I’ll have all I can do not to cry.”
Holiday Pops
When: Through December 24
Where: Symphony Hall, 301 Massachusetts Ave., Boston
Tickets: Starting at $37
Info: 888-266-1200, bso.org/pops
