Review | Voyces in a Chapel, Site Meets Glorious Sound in Santa Barbara

By this point, deep into the historic tradition of the 30-year-old Quire of Voyces Mysteries of Christmas concert, it’s hard to imagine life in Santa Barbara’s holiday season culture without it. The entrancing sound of refined and expertly enmeshed voices in this Nathan Kreitzer–directed a cappella group finds an ideal ambience in the tucked-away, Old World–ish context of what is now called St. Anthony’s Chapel.

In effect, the annual affair amounts to a blissful marriage of site, sound, and season that many of us routinely cherish. And that special “you have to be there” immediacy made its pandemic-enforced absence one of the many missing pieces in our cultural life during that troubled time. But the tradition is back in full force, just as a full house filled the chapel for the latest edition last weekend.  

Part of what makes the Voyces concert so richly relevant is its legacy of specifically Christmas-themed repertoire, tracing back centuries to the Renaissance era. And while this year’s program avoided early music entirely — no Thomas Tallis or Palestrina and friends — the deep influence and conventions of the Renaissance could be detected in the writings of contemporary and mostly living composers on the program.

One of those notable composers is alive and well in Santa Barbara — composer in residence Stephen Dombek’s new Mass for Six Voices, commissioned for the ensemble’s Japanese tour this summer, was given a teaser preview here, via two movements. The results, in the Kyrie and the Gloria, supplied an exhilarating example of the potential symbiotic blend of early music models and modern effects, a meeting of melodic polyphony and layered, closely voiced and cloud-like atmospherics.

Similar affecting antiquity-meets-the-new blends appeared in work by a globally diversified group of composers — from the Swedish Martin Åsander to inspired British composers John Rutter and Cecilia McDowall, to the special choral haven of its own, Minnesota, with René Clausen’s stirring “Magnificat” (featuring the superb soprano Nichole Dechaine as soloist). In keeping with the Quire’s long-standing and welcome tradition, the program eased — and floated — into its restful finale with Malcolm Sargent’s softly radiant a cappella arrangement of “Silent Night.”

Thanks to the reliably inspirational Quire of Voyces and other solid choral groups in these parts, the choral music continuum continues, locally as well as globally.