It can be done. Christmas music that is not familiar, not nostalgic, not singalong homey, can be affecting, in fact, even more communicative of the message for being fresh and unusual. A choral group can produce a program of music that is not commonly known yet interesting, of high quality, and well-designed on top of that. The San Francisco Choral Artists did that with its current Christmas in the Three Americas offering, heard Saturday in the Piedmont Community Church.

The Choral Artists are 23 accomplished singers, led by Magen Solomon, expert at program planning as at conducting. The sound is appealing, warm, finely balanced and most impressively, deliberately varied in tone to suit style or character. In two shape-note pieces from America’s Revolutionary War period, for example, Chester by William Billings and the hymn Eternal Praise by his contemporary, Parris, the sound was harsh, straight and driven, as tradition today imagines it was back then, rough-hewn and all that. In other, later pieces, subtle changes and shadings underscored dramatic or expressive points.

Solomon set up the groups of songs by type or subject, comparing treatments, Baroque and the present, one country of the Americas and another. The lively, highly energized Renaissance polyphonic Los Reyes of Francisco Guerrero (from Seville, clearly stretching the New World theme) was posed against the rich sonorities of The Three Kings by the 20th century Canadian Healey Willian. El cielo en murmulos by San Alfonso de Liguori (17th c.), in a contemporary arrangement, a tender piece, gently sung, was followed by Wayne Peterson’s new Carol, (“All this night, shrill Chaunticleere...”), in a fine, deep textured voicing of well-stocked, close or modern chords in progressions that had an effective traction.

O Magnum Mysterium settings by the living composers, Morton Lauridsen and David Conte, both focused on melodic flow, emphasized by the connective continuity of the Choral Artists’ rhythmicized diction that dwelled on the inherent beauty in the Latin syllables. Between these came a lovely, short Ave Maria by Villa Lobos, in Brazilian, I’d never heard before. Curiously, there and for the many pieces in Spanish that followed, the diction became fluid and soft, the group singing on vowels, seemingly seduced by the sensuousness of the language, the warm bath effect. That suited in sonority and feeling, the tenderness of the Liguori, the Duérmete apegado a mi and Canción de Cuna by the contemporary Venezuelan Alberto Grau, but not the word-communication. The Veinticinco de diciembre by Brian Banks, a young American resident in Mexico, wanted more energized consonants to get its rhythms pumping, as did the charming A Belén marchemos by the Venezuelan Luis Arreaza Matite (arr. by Felipe Izcaray).

Everything was fresh and different. Original compositions on texts so embedded in us — Silent Night by Herbert Bielawa, a rich setting melodically extending and connecting the short word phrases, in a loving, expansive way, and Maia Aprahamian’s O Little Town, in a more conventional harmonic style — had the effect Solomon promised in her spoken introduction of them. With different music suddenly, you thought about the words a little differently, certainly more actively. It had an effect not dissimilar from that of seeing different paintings of the same Christmas subjects. There should be more new settings of the venerable Christmas texts.

There were other nice program ideas, like the comparison between Banks’ updated, modern-modified take on the Spanish carol, Ríu, ríu, chíu, followed by Noah Greenberg’s well-known simple setting of its original tune with the swinging refrain. The Kyrie and Gloria from a mass by the 17th century Mexican Juan de Lienas, was pleasant, in not especially skilled Renaissance-style polyphonic style. Solomon had proposed that this was an example of a “revival” of the style at that time, but actually in music, as in architecture, the Mexican artists of the 17th century were out of touch and behind the times.

It was a delightful concert, artistic in every respect. There’s repertory out there that should be heard and with all the endless reiteration of Christmas music, both commercial and traditional, dinned at us from Hallowe’en on, it’s needed desperately. However, it takes a higher level of enterprise, imagination and talent to renew the faith.

Readers and followers of this journal can get behind this operation and help keep it healthy and in the clear. If your mail is anything like ours, you have been deluged with year-end contribution requests from dozens of charitable institutions but we need your support. We wouldn’t begin to suggest that our cause be considered ahead of some of these appeals, not in times like ours. However, if SFCV can be included somewhere in your considerations, that would be deeply appreciated and would definitely help keep our service on line. We need your support. Most importantly, we at SFCV wish you holidays that are as happy as you and yours can make them and a most musical New Year. Music is the one sure thing we have.

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