The Lydians are capping off their 35th anniversary with an ambitious Christmas concert that will expose listeners to musical styles from around the world.
The concert, A Magic Christmas Voyage, will challenge the 60�member choir to sing in five languages, including Yoruba, Spanish, French, German and Portuguese.
The choir used a Portuguese language expert to help the singers get the phrasing right on a Brazilian carol, and a Lydians musician who was also a French teacher helped with the song in that language.
Poet/singer Muhammad Muwakil will do an Arabic chant at the start of the concert and a song of Chinese and one of First People origin will be sung in English.
"When I looked at the repertoire of Christmas carols that we have done, it seemed that we had stuff in different languages or we chose things from different countries," said Gillian Bishop, one of the choir's creative guides, explaining how this year's songs and theme were chosen.
With this concert, the Lydians were "widening" what they usually do, to give the choir and audience an international experience, she said.
"When you get into a song and you begin to talk about where it comes from, who wrote it and what happened at that time, you develop a knowledge and an understanding of how another culture works," Bishop said.
The audience as well as the members of the choir will learn something, as the song origins will be explained in the concert's booklet, which, Bishop explained, usually becomes a collector's item.
The highlight of this year's concert will be the performance of the Missa Salsera, an epic, multi-part composition from Anthony Francis Rosado, a priest based in Brooklyn who's a talented composer and singer, among other things.
"[Rosado] sings beautifully, plays a mean salsa piano and he dances, dances in church," said Bishop.
Rosado is an intriguing figure.
Of Italian and Puerto Rican heritage, he has a bachelor's and a master's degree in music from the Manhattan School of Music.
In both his compositions and his ministry, he embraces Latin American culture.
"Reaching out to the Hispanic community is important to me," he said in an interview shortly before he was ordained in June.
Earlier this year, he offered salsa lessons every Friday at his church, St Fidelis.
Rosado–whip thin and bespectacled–can be seen energetically leading a class in a video on YouTube.
On his Web site, anthonyfrancisrosado.com, Rosado calls the Missa Salsera "one of the most innovative and dramatic musical settings of the Latin Mass...a true fusion of classical music and salsa." "The Missa is written to transform entire sections of the Mass into scenes which embody the dramatic richness of the Roman Catholic liturgy," says the site.
Recordings of the Missa–available on the site–demonstrate a scintillating collision of classical with contemporary.
The 30-year-old Rosado studied at the Manhattan School of Music with Lydian soloist Michael Zephyrine and so formed a link to the choir that led to the Lydians' performance of the Missa Salsera.
Zephyrine directed the first performance of the piece in June this year at St Paul the Apostle Church in New York City.
"Four movements of the Missa Salsera mass completed! Some serious foot tapping and shoulder shimmying going on here in The Lydians! Gracias por la musica, Fr Rosado!!" Zephyrine said in a post on Rosado's Facebook timeline.
Rosado will join the Lydians on stage, singing and playing the piano during the Missa Salsera.
Legendary pannist Len "Boogsie" Sharpe will also be performing on the piece.
Pan will feature prominently in the Lydian performance, as it has since Lydian Steel was created in 1995.
This year the Lydian pannists, besides providing accompaniment along with other instruments, will perform a soca Christmas medley by arranger/pannist Natasha Joseph.
This is new territory for Lydian Steel.
The group, whose members are trained to read music, usually performs classical.
The six pannists will also do an arrangement of Ribbons by Trinidadian Marilyn Williams.
"We're trying to do a different side of the steel," said Lydian Steel captain Tonya King.
"We are sort of evolving." This will be the fourth Christmas concert without the Lydians' iconic director Pat Bishop, who died in August 2011.
"In everything we do it's trying to make sure that she's proud," said King.
"We still keep her in our thoughts all the time." Gillian Bishop said she has not replaced her late sister Pat.
"I'm a stopper of gaps," she said, explaining her role.
"I know more than anybody else how big her shoes were.
So I wouldn't be so presumptuous to attempt to fill them.
"I think that has to be a kind of group effort," she added, "and still we will fall far short." "Although she has gone physically, she's still there," Lydians manager/musical director Patrick Bertrand said of Pat Bishop's absence.
"The spirit that she carried the choir along with, that spirit is still alive."
thelydianstt.com