Baton comes down throughout the South Bay for holiday concert season

There’ll be the sounds of brass, violins in the 18th-Century classical style and the jingle of sleigh bells.

One of Southern California’s most prestigious choruses will sing. So will the oldest men’s singing group in Los Angeles, not to mention several church choirs and community choruses.

The South Bay is welcoming the holiday season with music in churches, theaters, community centers and on college campuses. And--with selections ranging from Leroy Anderson’s “Sleigh Ride” and a parody of a familiar Christmas carol, to Mozart and Poulenc masses--there’ll be equal draughts of entertainment and inspiration.

The 110-voice Southern California Mormon Choir will give a free performance Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Palos Verdes Stake Center of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 5845 Crestridge Rd., Rancho Palos Verdes.

“We feel it’s an honor to have them because they don’t go to all of the churches,” said Stake President Randall G. Turner.

With light music, carols and two “Messiah” excerpts on the bill, choir singer and general manager Lyle Fackrel said that “it’s meant to be an entertaining evening.” The all-volunteer choir gives two concerts a month in the Southern California area and has traveled around the world.

Choirs and an orchestra at Torrance’s First Lutheran Church will turn to 18th-Century Italian music for their concert Sunday at 4 p.m., performing Pergolesi’s “Magnificat”--in which Mary learns that she will become the mother of the Christ Child--and Vivaldi’s “Gloria.”

“It’s to prepare us for Christmas, to get our thoughts a little bit away from the glitter and gaudiness of the shopping malls,” said Jane Ackerman, the church’s worship and arts chairwoman. Folk music and spirituals also will be heard in the concert, at which a free-will donation will be requested and child care provided. The church is at 2900 W. Carson St.

At the New Life Presbyterian Church in Manhattan Beach, choir director Valerie Tiemann is approaching the holidays with a sense of humor and a feeling of reverence. Her choir

will perform an arrangement of “I Wonder As I Wander” and other carols, but it also will do a parody carol--”O Little Town of Hackensack.”

Tiemann said many selections won’t be those everyone is familiar with, and this is intentional: “Music is an expression of joyfulness . . . an expression of worship. A new and exciting piece has a freshness, causes people to listen, to be more intent on the message.”

The choir will sing and lead carol sing-alongs at free holiday craft workshops sponsored by the Manhattan Beach Recreation Department. They will be Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m. at Joslyn Community Center, 1601 Valley Drive, and during the same hours Dec. 9 at Manhattan Heights Community Center, 1600 Manhattan Beach Blvd. A free concert will also be given Dec. 10 at 7:30 p.m. at the church, located at 500 Manhattan Beach Blvd.

B ack in 1888, lawyer Charles James Ellis thought Los Angeles should smooth out some of its Wild West edges with music and formed a men’s singing club. Today, the Ellis-Orpheus Men’s Chorus is the oldest men’s singing group on the West Coast, and it will make two holiday appearances in the South Bay.

A free concert will be given Sunday at 7:30 p.m. at Riviera Methodist Church, 375 Palos Verdes Blvd., Redondo Beach. The chorus also will sing Dec. 10 at 2 p.m. at the South Coast Botanic Garden, 26300 Crenshaw Blvd. on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Admission at the garden is $3 for adults, $1.50 for seniors and students, and 75 cents for children 5 to 12.

Bill Beck, a Hawthorne engineer who sings with the 32-man group, said 80% of the chorus members live in the South Bay and “the love of singing” has kept the amateur chorus going for decades.

The botanic garden also will ring with carols by the Palos Verdes Symphonic Band on Dec. 17 at 2 p.m.

Music by Corelli, Handel, Mozart and Boyce will be on the bill when the Chamber Orchestra of the South Bay plays a holiday concert Sunday at 8 p.m. at the Norris Theatre for the Performing Arts, Crossfield Drive and Indian Peak Road, Rolling Hills Estates. Tickets are $17 and $15.

In one selection, “Sleigh Ride”--this time the version written by Mozart--the orchestra will be joined by youngsters playing bells and tympani.

Selections ranging from Bach to Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess,” together with seasonal carols, will be played by the Mondavi Brass Quintet, a Los Angeles chamber group, in a free concert Dec. 15 at 8 p.m. in the Recital Hall at Harbor College, 1111 Figueroa Place, Wilmington. The holiday concert is part of an annual 10-concert series sponsored by the South Bay Chamber Music Society Inc.

The Catholic Mass, as interpreted by two great composers, will be the holiday offering of the South Coast Choral Society at a free concert Dec. 10 at 4 p.m. at Pacific Unitarian Church, 5621 Montemalaga Dr., Rancho Palos Verdes.

Ted Gardner, who directs the 40-voice group, said the masses, by Mozart and Poulenc, were written about 160 years apart and show how different musical ages viewed the same subject. “Mozart wrote his the year of the American Revolution,” Gardner said. “Poulenc’s was written when the Second World War was brewing.”

At El Camino College in Torrance, the Jane Hardester Singers will continue an 11-year tradition with “Carols by Candlelight” Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 and 7 p.m. in the Recital Hall at the college, 16007 Crenshaw Blvd. Admission is $10.

The program will range through Bach and Poulenc liturgical classics, Hanukkah songs and a narrative story with music, “Why the Chimes Rang.” In the tale, the simple gift of a poor little boy causes church bells--long silent before the selfish gifts of richer people--to sound.

Said Hardester: “It’s for a family audience, to see that people’s hearts are in the right place for the season.”

The college choir, led by Hardester, will present a concert Dec. 10 at 3 p.m. in the Recital Hall. Admission is $3 and the story the singers will tell that day is about the Grinch who stole Christmas.