For tenor soloist Jonny Michel, George Frideric Handel’s Messiah is more than a Christmas tradition – it’s a work of “endless musical value.”
Michel is joining soloists Sinead White (soprano), Eric Kallo (baritone) and Dave Rosborough (bass) in the Chilliwack Symphony’s current Messiah in the Valley series, including performances in Vancouver, Chilliwack and Abbotsford.
Featuring the Belle Voci singers and the CSO’s Baroque chamber orchestra – and conducted by Paula DeWit (also maestra of the White Rock City Orchestra) – the composer’s 1741 masterpiece comes to Good Shepherd Church, 2250 150 St., Surrey, on Saturday, Dec. 16.
The CSO concert – which begins at 7:30 p.m. and is expected to run until 10:30 p.m. – will be the only performance of Messiah on the Semiahmoo Peninsula this holiday season.
“Paula DeWit is passionate about performing Messiah with an interpretation that is true to the performance practice of Handel’s era,” Michel told Peace Arch News.
“She has early music specialists playing in the orchestra, and is detailed in her musical decisions with regard to Baroque articulation and phrasing,” he added.
“This production is especially full of energy and intensity, particularly in the faster movements.”
The Langley-based lyric tenor, also a choral director at Langley Fine Arts School, has a special interest in oratorio and concert works.
A former member of Vancouver’s Phoenix Chamber Choir, Michel has been a featured soloist with the CSO and Belle Voci, as well as the Arioso Quartet, the Good Noise Vancouver Gospel Choir, the Gloria Dei Chorale, Evensong Chamber Singers, the United Voices Choir and the Kwantlen University chorus.
His performing resumé also includes appearances as a soloist with the UBC Orchestra, the UBC University Singers and UBC Opera at Bard on the Beach.
“One musical gift that I’ve always appreciated about Messiah is the word painting – Handel was a master at composing music that reflects the meaning of the text and his melodies paint an expressive picture of the text in each movement,” Michel said.
As tenor soloist in the third movement, for example, he sings Ev’ry Valley, prophesying that the coming Messiah will make the crooked road straight, and the mountain and hill made low.
“Handel paints this by having the Tenor sing long and fast melismatic passages, up and down in patterns like the shape of rolling hills,” Michel observed.
Even more musical value is present in the performance-practice of singing Baroque music, he said.
“The soloist has creative licence to improvise musical turns and flourishing according to their expressive intention, and in that way every performance of Messiah becomes unique,” he added.
“I think since Messiah is performed so regularly, it is the performer’s job to inspire the listener with fresh expressive phrasing, original ornamentations, and musical decisions that enhance the text,” Michel noted.
“(You need to) sing and play with eager anticipation of the coming of the long-awaited Messiah in For unto us a child is born, and to highlight the deep sorrow and chastisement of the same Messiah in He was despised, ” he said.
“This work is full of new-life, celebration, pain, sacrifice and victory, and the music must be motivated by these themes.”
Tickets (Youth $10, General $45, Seniors $40 or Family $100) are available at chilliwacksymphony.com