Bel Canto’s 10th Anniversary Season Begins!

Glorious! A Holiday Celebration.
This exhilarating concert series will feature a rich diversity of musical styles and genres for which Bel Canto is well-known.

Opening the concert will be Craig Courtney’s Festival Gloria, a thrilling expression of joy for choir, strings and percussion.

Lushly harmonic settings of classic Christmas carols will be featured including Dan Forrest’s settings of O Little Town of Bethlehem for piano, strings, and oboe, and While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks, as well as John Rutter’s Est is ein’ Ros’ entsprungen (Lo How a Rose) for a cappella choir and oboe.

Contemporary tonalities and textures with richly evocative poetry such as Mark Kilstofte’s Caritas, Sarah Quartel’s This Endris Night, Jocelyn Hagen’s Let You’re your Heart Speak, and Jake Runestad’s Let My Love Be Heard will touch and inspire your soul.

And of course, what would a Bel Canto concert be without at least one rousing spiritual. This concert will have two, Ain’t That-a Rockin´arranged by Stacey V. Gibbs, as well as Kyle Pederson’s, contemporary spiritual, My King is Comin’ Soon.

Important Information for Friday Evening’s Concert

Happy Holidays from Bel Canto!

We are so happy that you will be joining us for our concert this Friday evening at the Methodist Church in Napa.

We have a few important items to share with you about this concert.

Doors will open for seating at 7:00 pm, the concert will begin at 7:30.

Tickets:

When you purchased your tickets online you were sent an email receipt that contained a link to your tickets.

You can either print out your tickets or send them to your phone to present at the door. If you have your tickets in hand there is no need to stop at the will-call table on the way in. You can simply present your tickets to the usher at the door and go straight in.

If you did not receive a confirmation email please check your junk mail folder or your trash folder for a message from “Ticketstripe”

In the event that you are unable to find this message then you can simply stop by the will-call table and give your name and you will be given a paper ticket voucher to take to the door. Our door lists are organized by the name of the person who purchased the tickets.

Tickets will be available for purchase at the door. We accept cash, check or credit card payments.

Reception:

There will be a reception following the performance in the hall right next to the chapel. We hope you will join us there for refreshments.

Thank you once again for your support and patronage. We hope “The World at Christmas” is the perfect start to your holiday season.

Bel Canto

The World At Christmas – Bel Canto’s Holiday Concert Series

As the holiday season approaches, many are filled with feelings of anticipation and delight. For others, however, the holidays can be challenging with so many expectations, and an awareness of a world that is filled with uncertainty, frustration, and in some cases, chaos, and war. And yet, the season is seen as a symbol and beacon of light, of hope, and of love. 

Come celebrate the season with us in song, as Bel Canto presents, The World at Christmas, a program of diverse music that invites you to experience longing and hope in Elaine Hagenberg’s setting of the ancient text, O Come, Emmanuel accompanied by a haunting cello obligato; celebrate the return of the light, in a mystical a cappella arrangement by Taylor Scott Davis entitled Solstice; be touched by Anders Edenroth’s The World for Christmas which blends fragments of The Night Before Christmas with lyrics that beg us to consider the fate of the world around us, and featuring our first Bel Canto Music Scholarship recipient, Camden Gilgallon; and be energized and inspired by a hip-hop reimagining of the well-known spiritual, Soon We Will Be Done complete with rap exhortation to be part of the change we seek in the world. As always there will also be gorgeously lush settings of traditional carols along with J. S. Bach’s Cantata 191 Gloria in excelsis Deo, which will feature outstanding Bay Area instrumentalists as well as Napa native, Lisa Austin Frisque (soprano) and her husband, Chad (tenor), as soloists.

Get your tickets soon as last season was sold out. You won’t want to miss these concerts!

Bel Canto Announces Our First StARS Scholarship Recipients!

We are very pleased to announce that we have awarded two scholarships for the 2023-24 academic school year.

Joining us during the fall semester will be Vintage High School Junior Camden Gilgallon and in the spring, Pacific Union College Senior Kaitlyn Nakanishi. Each of these students will receive a $2ooo.00 scholarship and will perform with Bel Canto during our weekend concert series.

We are very excited to work with both of these talented young women and hope that you will join us in celebrating their talent and achievement at one of our concerts this upcoming season.

Save the Dates!

We will be holding our Fall 2023 Christmas concert series on Friday December 1st and Sunday December 3rd. The Sunday concert will be at Mont La Salle Chapel and the Friday performance venue has yet to be set. Mark your calendars, tickets will be available through our website beginning in the Fall.

Bel Canto Announces Spring Concert Dates!

As winter ends, nothing represents the glories of new beginnings like a walk in the woods. Bel Canto is celebrating this in our spring concert, “Song of the Woods,” which will feature music reflecting the splendor of our natural world. Please join us as we perform songs exclaiming the glories of nature’s flora and fauna.

Set to the poetry of Shakespeare, Yeats, Byron, Sandburg, Frost, and Joyce Kilmer, the musical settings feature composers Johannes Brahms, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Daniel Brinsmead, and Moses Hogan. A particular highlight will be the evocative triptych “Evening Gale” by Anthony Bernarducci for chorus, piano, cello, and percussion, and featuring Brian Shaw, pianist, and Jeffrey MacFarland-Johnson, on cello.

As has been our custom, we are presenting these spring concerts as a benefit. A portion of the proceeds will support the efforts of the Napa Land Trust, which works to protect natural land and wildlife in Napa County.

Bel Canto will be giving two performances. The first will be Friday, May 5, 7:30 pm at Napa Methodist Church on the corner of 5th and Randolph Streets in Napa, an acoustically lovely and intimate setting. A reception will follow the concert.

The second performance will be on Sunday, May 7, 4:00 pm in the Chapel at Mont La Salle on Redwood Road in Napa. The Chapel at Mont La Salle is considered by many to be one of the most thrilling performing spaces in the North Bay.

Tickets may be purchased in advance on our website. Tickets will also be available at the door, however, seating for our Mont La Salle concert is limited and we often sell out this show so it is advisable to purchase tickets ahead of time.

Bel Canto Announces Holiday Concert Dates!

Ted von Pohle, founder, artistic director and conductor of Bel Canto is delighted to announce our 8th Season, and our first holiday concert in 3 years. Sing We Now of Christmas will feature new and familiar carols in wonderfully lush a cappella settings as well as in riveting arrangements accompanied by solo violin, oboe, string ensemble, piano, and even an Irish band. We’re pulling out all the stops! This will be an excellent way to ring in the season with your family and friends.

We have two performances for you to choose from:
Friday December 2nd at the First Presbyterian Church, Napa, 7:30 pm.
Sunday December 4th at Mont La Salle Chapel, Napa, 3:00 pm.

Tickets may be purchased in advance by clicking the link above. Tickets will also be available at the door, however, seating for our Mont La Salle concert is limited and we often sell out this show so it is advisable to purchase tickets ahead of time. (As of this writing we have fewer than 50 tickets left for the Sunday concert at Mont La Salle.)

We Are Back!

After two years of silence as a result of the pandemic, Bel Canto is thrilled and delighted to be performing again! Our spring concert, entitled, Return to Song, will feature our favorite pieces selected by the group from the last six seasons. We have been working hard to fine tune our voices and to polish up this repertoire in order to present a not-to-be-missed choral celebration. We look forward to sharing this much awaited event with you. Tickets may be purchased in advance by clicking this link.