Preview :: The Joys of Christmass
From The West Australian - Seven Days Magazine
by Neville Cohn
26/12/09
CONCERT
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New I Voci Singers at the Vienna Pops
Perth Concert Hall on 31st December 2009
Review: Neville Cohn
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Age has failed to douse the passion John Christmass has for music, writes Neville Cohn.
He's at an age when most of his contemporaries are either dead or passing the days making seashell houses in retirement homes. Not John Christmass, who turns 86 in March and maintains a work schedule that could well exhaust many half his age.
He is arguably Australia's oldest choral trainer and, after a lifetime's devotion to the art, Christmass is as enthusiastic, committed and hardworking as he has ever been.
Next month, he'll be taking his New I Voci Singers chamber choir on a third concert tour of Germany on invitation from music lovers in that country. There will be 10 concerts and three civic receptions, which will go some way to placing Perth on the music map.
Christmass recalls that at I Voci's very first concert in Germany, "the turnout was so big, it couldn't be accommodated. We were given a standing ovation at the end of our program and again after each of three encores."
But before that, there's work to be done organising and rehearsing for I Voci's 22nd annual Vienna Pops concert that, as ever, sees in the New Year with a performance at the Perth Concert Hall followed by dancing on the terrace.
"Over the years, this venture has raised over $350,000 for charities supported by the Rotary Foundation," says Christmass, a former WA Citizen of the Year and Senior Australian of the Year for WA. Taking some moments from his hectic schedule, Christmass lists some of the young musicians who have been offered spots in the programs when still relatively unknown.
"There's soprano Racheal Durkin, who has gone on to triumphs at New York's Metropolitian Opera, soprano Lisa Harper-Brown who is currently based in Berlin, Justin Friend, one of Perth's busiest tenors - and violinist Pavel Sergeyev."
Perth Concert Hall is invariably packed to the rafters at Vienna Pops and Best of British concerts - and Christmass' appearance on the podium to take his I Voci singers through their paces invariably prompts huge applause.
"It is an astonishing fact that John Christmass, in the 20 years and more over which I have been closely associated with him, has lost none of his drive, enthusiasm and commitment to qualify - and I emphasise quality most emphatically," says long-time collaborator and compere David Hawkes. "Over the years, he has contributed to the city's music life in innumerable ways, whether conducting Carols by Candlelight, at Cancer Council and Anzac Day performances or any of a multitude of other events," Hawkes says.
Christmass, who jokes that the tuxedo he wore at his wedding many decades ago still fits him perfectly, lists coaching young musicians not as work but as recreation. Music may be his prime passion but he and wife Sally delight in gardening and spending whatever time is available tending their gardenflowers and shrubs.
Idle is a word that doesn't appear in Christmass' dictionary. He also somehow finds time to chair the Kelmscott District Residents' Group - and regularly meets with friends on Wednesday mornings for coffee - a self -styled "grumpy old men's group".
Vienna Pops was at the Perth Concert Hall on December 31 2009.
