The St. Charles Singers’ 2023 “Candlelight Carols” concerts, the choir’s first holiday collaboration with a brass ensemble, will feature seasonal songs for choir and brass.

The mixed-voice chamber choir, founded and conducted by Jeffrey Hunt, will be joined by a quintet from the Millar Brass Ensemble.

“Brass brings a sparkling, celebratory sound to the Christmas season,” Hunt says.

The concert will offer the world premiere of Andrew Wainwright’s choir and brass arrangement of the early Canadian Christmas hymn “Huron Carol,” written for the St. Charles Singers.

A British-born composer, arranger, and performer of brass band music, Wainwright has won top prizes for his compositions in multiple international competitions. In 2017, the New York Philharmonic Brass commissioned him to write two pieces for its annual Holiday Brass concert. His music was featured for three consecutive years in the concert series.

About half the program will comprise music for choir and brass, the rest for choir alone, Hunt says.

Other works to be heard for the first time in a St. Charles Singers program are Australian choral luminary Stephen Leek's “Southern Cross” from the Oxford University Press collection "World Carols for Choirs,” June Nixon's rollicking arrangement of the French carol tune "People Look East,"
a movement from Daniel Pinkham's jubilant, Baroque-inspired "Christmas Cantata (Sinfonia Sacra),” and Rutter's arrangement of the Appalachian carol "I wonder as I wander.”

Also on the program are Jonathan Dove's "The Three Kings," Paul Halley's jazzy arrangement of the Christmas spiritual "Go Tell It on the Mountain,” Herbert Howells' "A Spotless Rose," Reginald Jacques' "Good King Wenceslas," Mykola Leontovych’s “Carol of the Bells,” based on a Ukrainian folk chant, Samuel Scheidt's "A child is born," Arthur Warrell's "We wish you a merry Christmas,” and David Willcocks' versions of "O Come All Ye Faithful," "Jingle Bells," and "Silent Night.”