Christmas concert rehearsals

AS IF yesterday's first rehearsal for the annual Christmas concert (scheduled for Friday, December 11), wasn't enough to get us into the holiday spirit, today we had our first snowfall at Maryknoll—the opening salvo of a four-day Nor'Easter blowing through till Sunday.

Under the direction of Ms. Judy Abel, the choir will gather together every Wednesday afternoon from 4:15 till 5:30 with special rehearsals for the struggling men's parts every Friday at 1:15. As usual, we sorely need male voices with only three tenors and two basses making it to the first rehearsal.

The men held their own against 20 women's voices. But since it is widely acknowledged that tenors, as a rule, rock, it is only Basses who are in desperate need of reinforcement.

Sixteen songs are planned—a record, I believe—and making the concert fully an hour and a half long. As usual, congregational participation with such standard fair as "O Little Town of Bethlehem" and "Joy to the World" will be interspersed amid old stand-bys such as "O Holy Night" and the de riguer solo by Fr. Mike Duggan, "Mille Cherubini" along with a lot of new stuff.