December 6
Holiday
St. Paul's Church, 315 West 22nd Street
Celebrate the season with The Chelsea Symphony! Our annual holiday concert begins with two wintry favorites: the Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila by Mikhail Glinka, and Alexander Glazunov’s lyrical Violin Concerto. Duke Ellington’s Three Black Kings is a gospel-infused tribute to King Balthazar (the Black king of the Nativity), King Solomon, and Martin Luther King. The program concludes with two beloved TCS holiday traditions: Leroy Anderson’s Sleigh Ride, conducted by a lucky raffle winner from the audience; and Aaron Dai’s The Night Before Christmas, featuring a special guest narrator.
Program
Ruslan and Lyudmila: Overture
Concerto for Violin in A minor, op. 82
Three Black Kings
The Night Before Christmas
Featured Artists
A graduate of Columbia University and the Mannes School of Music, Aaron Dai began studying piano at the age of five and went on to win the UNICEF Youth Concerts Competition three times by the age of fifteen. As a soloist and collaborative pianist, he has performed around the country and abroad, in New York venues such as Carnegie Hall, Steinway Hall, Symphony Space, and The Town Hall, and cities including Dublin, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and San Francisco. …
Violinist Veronica Carpenter is an impassioned performer and music educator based in New York City. Throughout her career, she has performed with groups such as the Flagstaff Symphony and the Phoenix Symphony and has shared the stage with many musical greats including Andrea Bocelli, Rachel Barton Pine, and Chris Thile. In 2018, her sextet curated a full-length recital at the Boston Sculptors Gallery, performing the Frank Bridge sextet and Schoenberg’s Verklaerte Nacht. She has collaborated with composers to commission …
Saxophonist, multi-woodwind instrumentalist, and composer Aaron Irwin is from central IL. Recognized as a “lyrical alto saxophonist and a compelling original composer” (Steve Futterman, The New Yorker), Irwin is a sought-after commodity in both the jazz and commercial worlds. He has eight recordings of original music as a leader with instrumentations spanning from trio to sextet. In addition to his own groups, Irwin has performed with many leading jazz voices in the New York music community including the Grammy-nominated, Darcy …
Conductor
A leader in the 21st century orchestral landscape, Dr. Matthew Aubin is constantly reaching new audiences through innovative performance formats and creative initiatives both on and off the podium.
The 2022-23 season kicks off Dr. Aubin’s inaugural year as Music Director of the Southwest Michigan Symphony Orchestra. Additionally, he is Music Director of the Jackson Symphony Orchestra and serves as Artistic Director of The Chelsea Symphony. In his role at TCS, he has led highly visible collaborations with partners such …
Mark Seto leads a wide-ranging musical life as a conductor, scholar, teacher, and violinist. He is Artistic Director and Conductor of The Chelsea Symphony in New York City, and Senior Lecturer in Music at Brown University, where he directs the Brown University Orchestra and teaches courses in music history, theory, and conducting. Recent highlights include performances with violinist Itzhak Perlman, violinist Randall Goosby, and clarinetist Anthony McGill, and the inauguration of The Lindemann Performing Arts Center at Brown University.
Since …