It’s the week of turkey and trimmings — aka time to mark up one’s calendar with holiday concerts. We’ve compiled seven offerings in the traditional folk and classical spheres, with a slight bias toward Burlington. (It’s Vermont’s most populous burg, after all.) You can attend an early evening concert for kids or a concert put on by kids. One stage will host three string musicians, another a whole orchestra. There’s a folk-music extravaganza, three excellent choir concerts, and Messiahs and Nutcrackers galore. Be sure to check the Seven Days events calendar for more concerts that weren’t yet announced at the time of this writing.
VSO Holiday Pops
Friday, December 5, 7:30 p.m., at Barre Opera House. $10-35. Saturday, December 6, 7:30 p.m., at the Flynn Main Stage in Burlington. $8.35-62. Sunday, December 7, 3 p.m., at Paramount Theatre in Rutland. $10-45.
Burlington composer Michael Schachter has written for some of today’s preeminent musicians and singers, who have premiered his works at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Carnegie Hall and the Hollywood Bowl. Now, Schachter’s music is coming to Vermont theaters. The Vermont Symphony Orchestra will debut a new commission — Schachter’s second for a Vermont group — at its Holiday Pops concerts in Barre, Burlington and Rutland. Inspired by a Jewish folktale, “The First Snow of Chelm” features narration by local jazz musician Marty Fogel.
Plenty of familiar favorites are on the program, too, from the traditional Ukrainian “Carol of the Bells” to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker Suite. In place of the VSO Chorus, which joins Pops every other year, audiences will hear five young voices from the Opera Company of Middlebury’s children’s chorus. They’ll sing a Vermontified version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” with lyrics such as “two Bernie mittens and a pint full of Ben & Jerry’s.”
Author M.T. Anderson will narrate excerpts of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol to music. And if that doesn’t get you in the mood, an audience sing-along and the sight of 50 musicians in Santa hats will.
Handel’s Messiah
Vermont Philharmonic presents Handel’s Messiah, Friday, December 5, 7:30 p.m., at St. Augustine Church in Montpelier; and Sunday, December 7, 2 p.m., at Barre Opera House. $5-25.
Burlington Baroque presents Handel’s Messiah, Saturday, December 13, 7:30 p.m., at Haskell Opera House in Derby Line. $10-45; free for kids under 18.
The Vermont Choral Union presents Handel’s Messiah, Sunday, December 14, 4 p.m. (sold out) & 7:30 p.m., at the College Street Congregational Church in Burlington; and Sunday, December 21, 4 p.m., at Holy Angels Church in St. Albans. $10-80, free for kids under 18.
Middlebury Messiah Sing, Sunday, December 21, 2 p.m., at the Congregational Church of Middlebury. Free; donations accepted.
You can have your Messiah at least three ways this season: as a sing-along (the Middlebury Messiah Sing, directed by Jeff Rehbach, is one of many); as a performance featuring local soloists (including Vermont Philharmonic’s with tenor Connor Trombly, a Burlington native and Opera Company of Middlebury Youth Opera alum); or with professional soloists from Québec.
The latter perform with L’Harmonie des saisons, a professional group of singers and musicians on period instruments from the Eastern Townships near Montréal. Its director, Eric Milnes, also founded Burlington Baroque and leads the Vermont Choral Union and the College Street Congregational Church choir. L’Harmonie concerts have routinely sold out since Milnes first brought them south of the border three years ago.
For L’Harmonie’s Messiah concerts in Vermont, Milnes will include local choral singers. Members of the Vermont Choral Union join the professional group for two concerts in Burlington and one in St. Albans. And at the Haskell Opera House in Derby Line, which straddles the international border, 25 Canadian artists will join 25 Vermont ones in a powerfully symbolic Burlington Baroque performance of the oratorio.
It’s “a message of peace and love presented directly on the border, [where] both audiences can enter the venue without border crossing,” Milnes wrote by email.
Vermont Youth Orchestra Association: ‘OrchestraPalooza!’
Sunday, December 7, 4 p.m., at the Flynn. $21-24.
The Vermont Youth Orchestra Association’s annual winter concert, “OrchestraPalooza!,” a tradition dating back to 2005, gets its name from a combination of the org’s three auditioned groups. The Vermont Youth Strings players are in elementary and early middle school; the Vermont Youth Philharmonia, which adds brass, winds and percussion to its strings, consists of middle and high schoolers; and members of the full Vermont Youth Orchestra are primarily in the upper grades. Collectively, they come from more than 60 schools around and beyond Vermont.
The two older groups lobbied to play specific pieces this season, and they won. The philharmonia will perform excerpts from The Nutcracker Suite, while the orchestra will do two movements from Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. The string ensemble will tackle Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnol, among other challenges.
A concert highlight will be trumpet player Jonathan Kafumbe, a Middlebury Union High School senior, jazz specialist and budding composer, who will solo on a movement from a work of his choice, Johann Nepomuk Hummel’s 1803 Trumpet Concerto. All three groups — about 180 students — take the stage for the finale, “Sleigh Ride,” Leroy Anderson’s festive holiday standard.
Solaris Vocal Ensemble: ‘Holiday Cheer’
Saturday, December 20, 7:30 p.m., at Waterbury Congregational Church; and Sunday, December 21, 4 p.m., at College Street Congregational Church in Burlington. $25 or pay what you can ($10-15).
A bonanza of local talent will shine at the high-caliber “Holiday Cheer” concerts by Solaris Vocal Ensemble, a 30-member mixed choir led by Dawn Willis. The crossover string quartet Skylark — violinist (and guitarist) Ben Lively, violinist Jane Kittredge, violist Ana Ruesink, and cellist John Dunlop — will accompany some pieces and solo several more from their eclectic repertoire, ranging from Danish folk songs to holiday tunes.
Eight local music educators will sing a special arrangement of “Jingle Bells,” among them Burlington High School choral director Myriam Bouti, Solaris’ conducting intern. Bouti will also lead a group of her students in a Nigerian Christmas song.
Solaris’ composer-in-residence, James Stewart, arranged one song and wrote another on the program. The former Vermont Public classical radio host, producer and scholar — who has a doctorate in composition, music theory and history — lost his job to federal cuts in July.
Stewart described his “Shine On: An Anthem for Solstice” as “a bit like a musical theater piece, with the kind of melody you can hum after one hearing.” Marne Lopez, Solaris’ accompanist, and choir member Patricia Norton will play the four-hands piano accompaniment.
“The solstice does not have a whole lot of songs to celebrate it,” Stewart noted. “This is about finding light to shine on ourselves in the midst of darkness.”
Champlain Trio
Saturday, December 13, 5 p.m., at the Double E Performance Center in Essex. $26.50; $10.60 for kids 12 and under. champlaintrio.com
How to get kids to enjoy classical music? Violinist Letitia Quante, cellist Emily Taubl and pianist Hiromi Fukuda have the answer. The trio will mount its one-off holiday concert on the stage of the largest movie theater at the Essex Experience, which also happens to hold one of Vermont’s best pianos. While vintage cartoons play on the giant screen, they’ll perform holiday and classical favorites surrounded by candles and festive decorations. The seats have cup holders, and the bar will be open for parents.
“It’s not entirely classical-classical, but there’s enough going on” to get the little ones hooked, Fukuda noted. That includes Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker Suite and “Ode to Joy” from Ludvig van Beethoven’s ninth symphony; the latter is a holiday tradition in the pianist’s native Japan.
Consummate musicians, the three time their meticulously tweaked arrangements perfectly to the visuals. That holds equally true for the nostalgic tunes — including songs from 1966’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” and Judy Garland’s “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” — and the Hanukkah melody “Maoz Tzur: Rock of Ages.”
As a special treat for the trio’s third annual holiday concert, Helen Lyons, Vermont Public’s music manager and classical music host, will read “’Twas the Night Before Christmas.” Between stanzas, audiences will hear favorites such as “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” “O Christmas Tree” and “Jingle Bell Rock.” Adults won’t want to miss out, either.
Songs for Midwinter With Kongero and Windborne
Friday, December 12, 7:30 p.m., Lane Series at the University of Vermont Recital Hall in Burlington. Sold out.
The four female singers of the Swedish a cappella group Kongero sing Scandinavian folk repertoire. The four American singers of Windborne, two men and two women, specialize in English folk and traditional tunes. Put them together — as the University of Vermont Lane Series is doing — and you have an octet of gorgeous voices with electric harmonizing capabilities singing world music.
Or, in this case, holiday folk tunes. Windborne will likely draw from its 2024 debut holiday album and illustrated songbook, To Warm the Winter Hearth, which broke crowdfunding records for a folk album. Kongero, the more established group with five albums to their name, sing hauntingly harmonized songs that will be less familiar to Vermont audiences but just as festive.
Lane Series director Natalie Neuert writes, “The songs, the voices, the blend — both Kongero and Windborne are just beautiful performers. They have that magical connection with an audience that is beyond just engagement or appreciation but something more intense and emotional.”
The Tallis Scholars
Friday, December 12, 7 p.m., at Highland Center for the Arts, Greensboro. $42-45. highlandartsvt.org
The eminent Brit Peter Phillips, one of the world’s authorities on sacred vocal music of the Renaissance, founded and still directs the 52-year-old Tallis Scholars. Named for the 16th-century composer Thomas Tallis, the group of 10 to 12 singers has been hailed by the New York Times as “captivating” for its “superb blend and balance.” Through 80 concerts a year around the globe and a wealth of recordings, the Tallis Scholars have pretty much created the audience for 16th-century polyphony, though they’ve also branched out to perform contemporary choral composers such as Arvo Pärt.
The Tallis Scholars will come to Greensboro thanks to KCP Presents, the Northeast Kingdom series founded by Jay Craven that brings world-class acts to small towns. Having seen the musicians in Boston, Craven raved about their “ethereal delicacy and power that was transporting.” They’ll sing in the Highland, a round theater modeled loosely on Shakespeare’s Globe in London, which was built 14 years after Thomas Tallis died.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Classical Christmas | ’Tis the season for holiday concerts. Here are seven across the folk and classical spectrums.”
This article appears in Nov 26 – Dec 2 2025.
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