Guest conductor, tenor lead group holiday show

By Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor

Steven Ziegler looks nothing like Santa Claus.

But that won’t have any bearing on Ziegler’s performance Sunday, when the Richmond resident sings the St. Nicholas parts in Benjamin Britten’s “St. Nicholas Cantata.”

Grammy award-winner Andrew Brown will conduct the special holiday show in Vallejo that features the Vallejo Symphony Orchestra, the Vallejo Chorale Society and the Campanelli Children’s Chorus, and will feature not just the cantata but a number of traditional Christmas songs and carols.

“St. Nicolas was a Christian bishop who lived during the time of the early church at the end of the Roman empire,” Brown told The Herald last week. “There were a lot of stories about him that were quite fantastic and there’s a lot of folk fables and tales around his life.”

Focusing on those stories, the English composer Britten created the cantata in 1948. “Some of them were funny, some were strange, bizarre,” Brown, 43, said.

As a result, he describes Sunday’s program, the first half of which is comprised of the cantata, as having a lot of color and character. “Each movement has a different story about his life.”

The stories range from the tale of a shipwreck to the story of three boys who were murdered by a butcher, then put in giant barrels to be pickled. “Saint Nicolas revived them, and brought them back to life because their mothers begged for mercy,” Brown said.

“In fact, that story is so popular that in England, Cadbury used to make a Santa Claus chocolate with three giant barrels of pickles at the bottom of his feet. Which I find very strange.”

Ziegler’s part is integral. “The chorus comments on everything Nicolas is doing, then he comes and declaims various things. It basically tells the story of his life,” the 32-year-old singer said.

It will be his first time working with both Brown and the Vallejo Choral Society. Britten originally wrote the tenor part for Peter Pears, Ziegler said, “so any time I’m singing Britten I have the shadow of Peter Pears hanging over me. I try to respect his contribution, but find my way around it, too.

“Fortunately I guess I have a sort of similar voice to his, so it’s not too hard to make my way around it. But there’s times when you’re singing it and you are like, ‘Oh, yes, this is a Pears moment!’”

The second half of the concert will include a mix of common and not-so-common carols and songs.

“We were thinking, ‘What would go well with the St. Nicolas Cantata?’ We’ve taken some carols from Russia, some winter songs we’ve taken from England,” Brown said. “We’ve intermixed them with songs that the audience will sing — Christmas carols and traditional carols that the audience will sing along with the chorus.” Brown said.

“It’s a combination of these different things, that’s why we’re calling it the ‘Tales from the Winter Hearth,’ to connote that sense of storytelling and family tradition and Christmas time and how we gather for the season as a community — and how we just enjoy each other’s company.

“And singing, of course, that’s a part of that.”

If You Go
The Vallejo Symphony Orchestra and Vallejo Choral Society concert will be at 3 p.m. at the First Presbyterian Church, 1360 Amador St., Vallejo. Tickets are $15-$19. Call 707-653-6827 or 707-643-4441 for tickets.