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The best way to welcome Christmas is Welcome Christmas!, the VocalEssence holiday concert from American Public Media.

Long a favorite from their appearances on A Prairie Home Companion, VocalEssence rings in the season with an all-new Welcome Christmas!

It's an hour of joyful holiday music featuring the Minneapolis-based chorus, VocalEsssence, and hosted for the thirteenth year by APM's John Birge.

This year’s VocalEssence Welcome Christmas! concert celebrates the holidays with the warmth of traditional carols and the exhilaration of new songs for the season. The concert features a garland of carols from Sweden, and the world premiere of this year’s Welcome Christmas Carol Contest-winning carols, composed for chorus and bell choir. Other carols were chosen by VocalEssence fans in an online audience favorite poll.

Gramophone magazine called VocalEssence “excellent and vibrant.” NEA Chairman Dana Gioia named them “one of the irreplaceable music ensembles of our time.” Join us in December for holiday classics new and old, when Philip Brunelle and VocalEssence Welcome Christmas! from American Public Media.

Music:
Traditional, arr. Chip Davis: Still, Still, Still
Praetorius/Jan Sandström: Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming
J. David Moore: I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day (FP)
Mark Sirett: Thou Shalt Know Him
Mark Shepperd: Come Join Their Song (FP)
Traditional, arr. Todd Wilson: Angels We Have Heard on High
James Pierpont: Jingle Bells
Various Swedish Carols
Franz Biebl: Ave Maria
Paul Lohman: What Child
Traditional: Ding Dong! Merrily on High
Daniel Kantor: Night of Silence