Last year it was Sweden.
This year, the sounds of Scotland and Ireland top the Coastal Sound Music Academy’s holiday program, which can be heard on Sunday night at the Evergreen Cultural Centre in Coquitlam.
At 7 p.m., the 80-member adult De Coro choir takes the stage for its annual Christmas concert, Comfort & Joy, with Delta Pipe Band Highland piper Zhongxi Wu, who is best known as a Chinese musical instrument specialist and a teacher at the Vancouver Symphony School of Music.
Among other songs, Wu and the choir will lead a sing-along of the New Year’s Eve anthem Auld Lang Syne, said Diana Clark, CSMA artistic director, children’s choir director and co-director of the Con Brio choir.
Meanwhile, CSMA’s youth choir will perform earlier in the day, mixing new and old traditional holiday music such as Walking in a Winter Wonderland. “It’s always a feel-good, fun matinee show because the kids are always spontaneous and so terrific,” Clark said of the 70 young singers.
Their Coquitlam shows wrap up a busy Christmas schedule for the award-winning academy.
On Saturday, the youth choir is at the New Westminster Christian Reformed Church in Burnaby — under the direction of conductor Joel Tranquila — to sing songs from Canadian artists Gordon Lightfoot, Sarah McLaughlan and Erin Propp. Sarah Quartel’s Snow Angel (with cello and narrator) will be the highlight for the event.
Recently, the choirs were also at the city of Coquitlam’s Lights at Lafarge, the Cheer at the Pier in Port Moody and at Christmas gatherings for Ikea Coquitlam and the Coquitlam Farmers Market craft fair.
• For tickets to the 3 or 7 p.m. Comfort & Joy shows at the Evergreen Cultural Centre (1205 Pinetree Way), on Dec. 10, call 604-927-6555 or visit evergreenculturalcentre.ca.
jcleugh@tricitynews.com
