A Christmas Rose

If you find it hard to get excited about Christmas music, share a glass of wine with VocalEssence artistic director Philip Brunelle. His enthusiasm is infectious and it culminates in his choral ensemble’s annual Welcome Christmas!—a mix of contemporary works, newly commissioned carols, obscure classical works, and new arrangements of traditional carols.

The centerpieces of this year’s concert are two contemporary pieces: The world premiere of Conrad Susa’s “Love-Song Serenade” and a rare performance of Norwegian composer Egil Hovland’s “The Most Beautiful Rose.”

The latter, written for a narrator, women’s voices, and minimal accompaniment, has been overlooked in this country. (It was, after all, written in Norwegian.) Several years ago, Brunelle had it translated, and this will be its second performance in English.

“It’s a little folk tale about what caused a rose to bloom,” Brunelle says with an almost wistful look on his face. “I don’t want to give [the story] away. At the end, people just sigh.”

As for Susa’s new work, it’s a setting of five poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Susa, who Brunelle calls “one of the great writers for voice of our time,” originally intended to write a winter serenade. But the poems he chose focused more on love, which Brunelle aptly describes as “appropriate for any season.”

The rest of the program is a beautiful mélange of carols. For those craving a taste of the familiar, an audience singalong of the “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s Messiah closes the concert. Dec. 1. Trinity Lutheran Church, 115 N. 4th St., Stillwater; Dec. 2 & 9. Plymouth Congregational Church, 1900 Nicollet Ave., Mpls.; Dec. 8. Normandale Lutheran Church, 6100 Normandale Rd., Edina; 612-624-2345