Handel and Haydn give us Bach and a whirl beyond - Christmas Flowers Mexico

As Boston winter holiday traditions go, the Handel and Haydn Society’s “A Bach Christmas’’ does not have the cachet of “Messiah’’ or “The Nutcracker’’ or Holiday Pops. But what would Christmas be without Bach’s Advent and Christmas cantatas, and in particular his “Christmas Oratorio’’?

The program that American conductor Steven Fox, in his H&H debut, has assembled for this year’s celebration opens with Bach’s Cantata No. 133, “Ich freue mich in dir,’’ and closes with Cantata V from the “christmas flowers mexicoOratorio.’’ But in between, Fox takes us on a whirlwind sleigh ride that even Santa might envy, with musical stops in Mexico, Bolivia, Russia, and the United States. It’s a stunning tribute not just to Bach but to his influence and that of the Baroque style.

Thursday evening at Jordan Hall, “Ich freue mich in dir’’ stretched somewhat the 13 instrumentalists and the 16 singers, from whose ranks the vocal soloists were drawn. There were occasional intonation problems and hectic moments from the orchestra, and soprano Margot Rood, though pleasantly nasal, sounded thin and did not enunciate clearly. Tenor Stefan Reed, rich and soft, was the vocal standout. And everything came together in the lulling final chorale, where the chorus vows to sleep in the newborn “Jesulein.’’

Scored for seven strings and organ, the anonymous “Sonata Chiquitanas,’’ an instrumental piece from Bolivia, provided an agreeable palate cleanser. The villancico “Celebren, Publiquen’’ by Mexican composer Manuel de Zumaya - a contemporary of Bach’s who blended Old and New World styles - is a hymn to Mary rather than Jesus. Both chorus and orchestra made a joyful noise, even if the Spanish pronunciation did not have much bite.

Generic pronunciation was also a minor blemish in the Russian hymn that opened the second half of the program, Dmitry Bortniansky’s “Tebe Boga Khvalim’’ (“We Praise Thee, O God’’), but the flavor of this odd amalgam of Italian (Bortniansky spent 10 years studying in Italy) and Russian church music was spot-on. And the performances of the two American hymns, “The Shepherd’s Star’’ and Jeremiah Ingalls’s “The Apple Tree’’ (which likens Jesus to the tree of life), were the evening’s best.

Cantata V from the “Christmas Oratorio’’ describes the journey of the Three Wise Men to Bethlehem. I missed the trumpet and percussion that elevate this piece’s other sections, but it was Bach’s decision to use here the softer, gentler oboe d’amore, and Stephen Hammer’s introduction to the bass aria glowed like a christmas flowers mexico blogs candle. By this point, the singers were in full angelic flight. Fox explained that they were going to repeat the opening chorus “because it’s fun to perform.’’ It was fun to listen to, as well.

Visitors Impressed With Lights - Christmas Flowers Mexico

Rae Warburton,

Poplar Point Correspondent...

Last week I said where did November go and you can almost say the same thing about December. The weather has stayed quite nice however, except for the strong winds that sometimes prevail.

The cousins from Courtenay, BC, had a wonderful experience coming on the train. Marjorie and Roger had an hour off the train in Jasper that they really liked. The train was almost on time getting into Winnipeg and my daughter Kim met them there. They stayed overnight with Kim as I had given them our truck to use. Saturday I had them for a christmas flowers mexico  dinner and yes the decorations were all up. Mary Warburton from Portage, her daughter MaryAnne and Earl Yeo from Saskatoon joined us as well. They were on their way home from being in Mexico for a month. On Sunday the travellers ate at Betty and Les Kelly’s home. Monday they were in at Mary Warburton’s and I was invited as well. We toured the Island Lights after as well as Campbell Street and the gingerbread like home on the crescent. Both of them really were impressed with the Island lights. Tuesday the pair went into Winnipeg to visit and Wednesday they had another visit with me and then down the road to Uncle Bert’s. They flew back home on Thursday. I hope they had a nice visit with us.

The next day I had lunch with some Minnedosa girls at Polo Park in Winnipeg. I commented that it was not a good time to have our lunch at Moxies because the parking lot was full of shoppers and their cars. After it was over I had a visit with Dr. Nero before travelling home.

Last weekend Josef and Emily Upgang travelled by bus with the Central Plains Bantam Females to Thompson, MB, for a tournament. They played 4 games; one Win, 2 losses with shoot-outs and I Tie. While Emily was playing up north, her brother Evan and was playing in Morden with the Central Plain Bantam Major Males and came home with the Silver award. Congratulations to you both.

On Tuesday afternoon I went to Oakville school for their christmas flowers mexico blogs Concert. It was exceptionally well done. After it was over, I went to Portage and got a Christmas tree and once I got it in the house it smelled so good.

Sincere sympathy is extended to Ernie Shwaluk, Trevor and Maureen, Trent and Maureen and Tyson in the sudden passing of their wife and mother Eleanor.

An Eco-Friendly Christmas Tree - Christmas Flowers mexico

They have already shown up on New York City's streets, the christmas flowers mexico blogs tree sellers with their rows of fragrant fresh-cut pines and spruces. Early reports from around the nation indicate that these sidewalk entrepreneurs are doing well, with initial sales higher than during the last few years, perhaps reflecting increasing consumer confidence levels.

In the past, christmas flowers mexico  trees were harvested from wild forests. But nowadays they come from farms, where they are cut at the tender age of 9 to 12 years. Over half of Americans who put Christmas trees up use the artificial variety, which do not shed needles, and which many perceive to be an eco-friendly alternative to cutting living trees. Others dispute this, claiming that the industrial manufacture of the fake trees, which often contain lead and other chemicals in their PVC plastics, pose a greater environmental threat than growing the real ones does.

Most artificial Christmas trees come from -- you guessed it -- China. In 2007, New York Senator Charles Schumer called on the Consumer Products Safety Commission to investigate lead levels in these imported products.

Some historians trace the origin of the Christmas tree to Egyptian and later Roman festivals, where tree boughs were decorated to celebrate the return of the sun at the solstice. In many spiritual traditions worldwide, trees symbolize the generativity and creativity of life itself, how new forms are continually branching out of the old, and all that exists is an integral part of a single ancient, yet self-renewing and living Reality.

From the material standpoint, we know that without trees, which create much of the oxygen that we breath through photosynthesis, human life would not be possible. Yet forests are vanishing at an unprecedented rate, especially in tropical regions, where population pressure and large scale commercial logging have in the last fifty years destroyed over half of the earth's rainforests. Given this growing threat, maybe it is time to adopt a new kind of Christmas tree, one that we plant rather than cut down.

Recently I received an update from my friend Marc Ian Barasch about the Green World Campaign, which he founded in 2005, a nonprofit organization which is engaged in community reforestation projects in Ethiopia, Kenya, Mexico and India. I have known Marc for many years as a spiritually minded fellow wordsmith intent, as so many of us are, on saving the world with his pen. Over time, however, merely putting lofty sentiments on paper no longer seemed enough to Marc, who writes.

Hanging out with the folks who do the heart's heavy lifting -- homeless shelter workers, kidney donors, people who forgave their mortal enemies -- had subtly changed me. Now I needed to get out from behind my desk, off the cushion, and actually do something for the world. But what?
What indeed? Barasch, a lover of nature and global thinker, was drawn to do something which would have a positive impact on the environment, and also help the growing legions of the desperately poor in Third World lands. In the process of writing his latest bestselling book Field Notes on the Compassionate Life he came up with the principles for "Green Compassion," which Barasch defines as:

Environmentalism as if people mattered. 'Green' is not just saving biodiversity and boosting clean tech, but supporting sustainable rural economies, rights of women, indigenous culture... We need to do things that serve both people and planet.
Putting these principles into practice, my friend has discovered, is both exhilarating and also increasingly problematic in a financially stressed world, where competition for philanthropic dollars has become fierce. But in the past, support has always come in the nick of time for his shoestring projects on three continents.

The idea has been to involve local communities in the regeneration of their own ecosystems. In East Africa, for example, Green World Campaign is working with the Kenyan Forest Service to help farm families develop sustainable revenue-generating activities like beekeeping, herb-harvesting, and ecotourism at the same time as they plant two million trees and build an elephant fence to discourage poaching and illegal tree felling in the imperiled Rumuruti Forest.

Barasch believes that restoring the ecology and the economy in places like Rumuruti go hand in hand. In addition to providing training and employment to hundreds, the Green World Campaign will be distributing five thousand fuel efficient cook stoves to local residents, which it is hoped will prevent one hundred thousand tons of carbon dioxide from being released in cook fires, and cut the current rate of deforestation in the region in half.

It is not enough just to plant trees, Marc has found out -- you have to reseed communities and give them a stake in protecting and rejuvenating their own forest lands. In his view, the old divisions between helping people and protecting nature no longer makes sense. We need projects in which these two goals are inextricably linked. Replanting forests in degraded regions like East Africa, according to Barasch, is the ecological equivalent of one-stop shopping.

Trees restore degraded soil, increase crops, feed livestock, provide building materials and firewood, restore biodiversity, sustain villages, and bring dormant springs back to life -- all the while sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere.
What better Christmas gift to give our imperiled planet than to plant a tree in a place that badly needs it? Please contact my friend Marc Barasch to find out how you can help.

12/10: Christmas Mariachi Festival's swan song - Christmas Flowers mexico

"This was a painful and gut-wrenching decision," says Elias, who runs Elias Entertainment with his brother, Francisco. "This was like our child."

Launched in 1992, the christmas flowers mexico  Mariachi Festival has become a Valley tradition, attracting grandparents to children. The concerts blend spectacle with sentiment and feature some of the world's top mariachi musicians, along with headliner vocalists and folkloric dancers. Held at US Airways Center, the show has brought more than 150,000 people to the venue to witness its mix of music and colorful pageantry.

"It became a tradition for a lot of people, and it's very sad to think a tradition like that will be leaving," says Margie Emmermann, the governor's policy adviser for Mexico and Latin America and executive director of the Arizona-Mexico Commission.

It was a tradition not only for the public, but for musicians.

"It was one of the things we looked forward to every year," says Jose Hernandez, leader of Mariachi Sol de Mexico, a Los Angeles troupe that appeared annually at the festival. "It was a beautiful event and always so moving. Juan is one of those people who is in it for the music, not the money."

Elias says money isn't the reason the festival faces its last curtain call. The event was never in the red, he says, although he acknowledges that attendance has dipped. At its peak in the mid to late '90s, about 13,000 people would attend each year; in 2010, he estimates about 7,000 people came through the doors.

"Did we see a difference in attendance from the '90s, when everybody had extra money, to the last couple of years?" Elias asks. "Sure. I'm not going to lie. But financial aspects are not the reason why we're stopping.

"This was more a personal realization that we wanted to do something different, and in order to evolve in business, we wanted to make some changes."

In addition to the national economic downturn, Elias says the state's political climate has hurt a lot of Hispanic businesses and that attendance is down at most Hispanic concerts in the Valley. Case in point: When Mexican superstar Joan Sebastian played here this year, he was booked at the 2,700-seat Celebrity Theatre and failed to sell out. But five years ago, Elias presented Sebastian at US Airways Center, and he attracted more than 14,000 people.

"You have to understand how many people have left Maricopa County in the past two years," he says. "I'm not political, but it is what it is. The whole climate has changed. And the economy has changed for everybody."

And, he says, the festival's end is part of a natural progression.

"It's a life cycle," he says. "Everything has a beginning and an end. This has been an amazing, rewarding experience, but now it is time to move on, to evolve, to take on other challenges."

Branching out

Lorenzo Lucas worked with the Elias clan in research and development for more than 10 years. He knows the family must be aching from the decision.

"This is their culture -- it's in their blood," says Lucas, who now works for Alliance Beverage. "These are passions they inherited from their dad: mariachi and celebrating life in the traditional way you do in Mexico. This event is close to their hearts."

Elias says if you look at the company's annual Phoenix Tequila Fest, also happening this week, you'll get an idea where Elias Entertainment is headed.

"About 80 percent of the folks that attend that event are not Hispanic, but they immerse themselves in the culture and the food for a few hours," he says. "We're always going to be a company that has Hispanic roots, and that's always going to be a resource for us. That's who we are. But maybe we'll be looking at events that are inclusive to the entire community and not necessarily mainly for Hispanics."

In the beginning

The christmas flowers mexico blogsMariachi Festival was an event that attracted fans across the board, especially with such crossover-minded headliners as Vikki Carr, Jose Feliciano and Linda Ronstadt. But when the festival started, it wasn't an easy sell.

The Tucson International Mariachi Conference had long been established event, but in the Valley, mariachi was another story. The traditional music didn't get much radio play, and outside Mexican restaurants, it didn't get exposure. Because the Elias brothers already produced a successful mariachi festival in Las Vegas, they started thinking about Phoenix.

"The Tucson conference was so successful and it was always sold out way in advance," Elias recalls. "We thought, 'Why don't we do something that's different?' So we thought about doing it during the holidays and serenading Our Lady of Guadalupe and doing the re-enactment of Las Posadas. This was something no one was doing."

The festival came solely from the mind of the family. It wasn't a nationwide package tour; instead, they selected the artists themselves. It wasn't cheap, with some acts flying in from Mexico for the event and then returning home that night. Elias even wrote the script.

"This wasn't something that people taught us how to do," he says. "We learned this as we went along."

So did the public. Elias recalls that there was some confusion the first year, because virtually all large Hispanic-themed concerts at the time were held at Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

"We sent four members of our staff to the Coliseum to redirect folks to the arena," Elias recalls, laughing. "They were going there out of habit. Hispanics in the Valley weren't used to going downtown to the arena for concerts until we came along."

Big acts

There were other firsts. At the festival in 1993, Alejandro Fernandez, now a major performer in Latin music, made his first U.S. appearance without his father, iconic singer Vicente Fernandez.

"His father came to us and said, 'I trust you. You'll set him up to succeed,'" Elias recalls. "Those kinds of things meant a lot to us."

Jose Feliciano had never performed with mariachis until appearing at the festival in 1996. He enjoyed it so much that he later went on to record a full-on mariachi disc, "A Mexico ... Con Amor" with Mariachi Sol de Mexico's Hernandez.

"He fell in love with the music," Hernandez says. "You get these people and you're not sure what to expect, but they just love the music."

Lucas recalls the 1994 outing, when Mexican actress and singer Lucha Villa appeared with the Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlan.

"I'd only seen those guys on my grandparents' album covers, and here I am, watching them onstage," Lucas recalls, choking up at the memory. "And Lucha Villa, not only a singer but a movie star, is singing with them.... It's one of those moments that you know is rare, and it's a big part of my life."

Other acts went in a different direction. In 2001, Hernandez arranged a version of Vikki Carr's 1967 million-seller "It Must Be Him" with mariachi strings and horns, and the song moved from its easy-listening origins to a tequila-and-tears weeper.

"She loves it," Hernandez says. "She still uses the arrangement today."

Carr has headlined the festival four times, the most of any performers. It wasn't a coincidence.

"She was my father's girlfriend, but she didn't know it," Elias says, laughing. "If he had his way, she would have performed every year. We lost him in 2008, but he was always so proud of the festival -- especially when Vikki Carr was there."

Musical traditions

Other heavy-hitter headliners include Pepe Aguilar, Arturo Sandoval, Cristian Castro, Ana Gabriel, Pedro Fernandez and Jose Luis Rodriguez. This year's headliners are repeat players: Antonio Aguilar Jr. performed in 2002 and, in a neat bit of serendipity, Beatriz Adriana appeared at the inaugural festival.

At that first festival, Hernandez arranged a lovely, haunting medley of "White Christmas," "The Christmas Song" and "Silent Night." It became a signature of the Christmas Mariachi Festival, spotlighted every year.

"I think it's going to be a little harder to play it this year," Hernandez says. "I think it's going to be very emotional."

That medley is one of the memories that Emmermann, the governor's policy adviser, will carry. A former exec at Bank of America, she arranged a sponsorship between the bank and the festival, so she always has felt a personal connection with the show.

"When they bring all the mariachis onstage for the finale and play and sing the Christmas music ... it can send chills down your spine," she says.

Lucas thinks the absence of the festival will leave a big hole in the Valley's cultural identity.

"There is an affinity in Arizona for all that is Mexican," he says. "Even in light of the SB1070 stuff, most people still really love this culture."

Elias, who grew up around mariachi music, is preparing for the night to be simultaneously joyful and sad.

"It's going to be a very emotional day for us," he says. "This event has been my dream, and so many people love this event. I don't even have the heart to issue a press release that this is going to be the last one. It's just too hard."