Unwrapping a New Holiday Song

Never tell Don Edick it can’t be done. Even if the task is daunting--like coordinating 180 singers, 60 bells and a five-piece brass ensemble in just two rehearsals to perform his new composition for this weekend’s Winter Festival Concert in Long Beach.

“It will happen,” said Edick, 31. “I have faith.”

The performance of Edick’s “Ring the Bells at Christmas” during the annual Cal State Long Beach holiday songfest is unprecedented in the almost 40-year tradition of Winter Festival concerts.

The university choral program typically focuses on traditional holiday works instead of unveiling new compositions. And Edick is a student, making it all the more unusual, said program coordinator Leland Vail.

“Every year the concert is going to be basically the same--with choirs, hand bells, the brass section and Christmas themes--so the idea is to make it a little different every year,” Vail said.

“This year it’s a new composition. And there’s nothing really traditional or slow about the piece. It goes lickety-split and it’s full of intricate rhythms. At the end there’s a kind of choral free-for-all representing the confusion and discord sometimes associated with the season.”

Edick concedes, “I haven’t written a ho-ho-ho, let’s-go-shopping piece.”

The five featured singing groups have rehearsed their parts separately but never together, so Vail was anxious about all the pieces of “Ring the Bells at Christmas” working together. But Edick was unconcerned, perhaps because he will conduct his own composition.

“I know they’re worried about putting it all together, but it’s a well-written piece,” said Edick, who also is assistant director of the University Choir and teaches a class on 16th- and 18th-Century harmony.

Not since 1978, when the Winter Festival sold out the 3,000-seat Terrace Theater by featuring university alumni and pop singers Karen and Richard Carpenter, has the annual concert taken such an ambitious step, Vail said.

But many elements of the concert will remain the same. Like every year for the past 15, the concert will be held in the sanctuary of the First Congregational Church of Long Beach.

Concert-goers will be surrounded by song, featuring the University Choir and Chamber Singers on the choir loft, the 49’er Chorus on the west balcony, the Women’s Chorus on the east balcony and the Vocal Jazz Ensemble where the pulpit usually rests. The Carilloneers Hand Bell Choir, from the Claremont United Church of Christ, and the university’s festival brass ensemble also will perform.

Santa Claus will visit from the North Pole, and the audience will be encouraged to sing along during a few Christmas carols, Vail said.

The Winter Festival Concert will be held at 4 p.m. today. Tickets may be purchased at the door at First Congregational Church, Cedar Avenue at 3rd Street, Long Beach.