David Burks, Artistic Director and Conductor of the Torrance Civic Chorale

In general, I am not too fond of Christmas carols. I find them sappy and all too frequently a wheezy, whiny attempt to get shoppers to go into a buying frenzy. Mt annual exception is the Christmas concert of the Torrance Civic Chorale. Here there is no Little Drummer Boy PahRupUpUpPum, but rather an attempt to find the hidden heart of Christmas and Chanukah through music.

Under its genial and brilliant artistic director and conductor, David Burks, the Chorale has put on a series of concerts over the years that feature a combination of old standbys in new arrangements, medleys, and relatively unknown (to us) holiday music from around the world.This year featured the American premiere of “Wherever You Are,” a British carol referring to the enforced separation of families of Tommies during the Afghanistan conflict.

Martine and I started attending the concerts at the invitation of a good friend of ours who sings Second Soprano. But we wound up just loving the concerts as a heart-warming manifestation of the holiday spirit as we feel it should be—not the way it is in elevators and blaring over the speakers at shopping malls.