by Daniel Hathaway

If the commercial frenzy of Christmas and its wall-to-wall musical onslaught already has your ears ringing with fatigue, there’s a wonderful antidote close at hand: the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge and its new CD, Veni Emmanuel: Music for Advent (Harmonia Mundi). The ensemble stops at Fairmount Presbyterian Church this Saturday evening to sing the last concert of its seven-city U.S. tour, a program taken from the CD, and there will certainly be copies for sale that night.

Don’t miss the opportunity to pick one up and play it frequently between now and December 24 and beyond — it’s a superb collection of music brilliantly conceived and wonderfully performed by the 30-voice ensemble of women and men, formed in 1971 under John Rutter and now directed by Graham Ross (Rutter still has a hand in the choir’s activities, having served as sessions producer, recording engineer and editor for the album, which was recorded at All Hallows Church, Gospel Oak in North London and at St. Alban’s Abbey in March and April of 2012.) [Read more…]