‘Behold Our God’ Christmas Concert 2017
Residents of Eastern Rensselaer County were in the Christmas spirit this past Sunday afternoon, December 17, at the Petersburg Baptist Church. The residents sang along to Christmas music performed by a local all-star lineup of musicians, featuring the Taconic Valley Community Choir and instrumentalists, Leslie Green, Dan LaMontaigne, Linda Morrison, Matina Patsos, Tiffany Sullivan, and Martha VonSchilgen. The event was directed by pianist Karen Webster. “Behold Our God,” this year’s church concert theme, centered on the birth of Jesus Christ. It is Christ’s birth that later shaped the way and how individuals believe and think about having God be a part of their lives and religion. This event was free for anyone to attend the concert, regardless of what religion they believed in spiritually.
The choir began by singing a cover of the Christmas classic, “O Come All Ye Faithful,” followed by “Ding Dong! Merrily On High,” “Bethlehem Promise, Bethlehem Joy,” “Hope Is Born,” “Tiny Miracle” (A Christmas tune that had an African music flair to it through the clacking of the wooden blocks and taps that you could be heard from the percussion instruments), “Amen! Tell It On the Mountain,” “Mary Did You Know?” among other contemporary and classic Christmas tunes that the audience applauded and sang along to throughout the afternoon.
After the adult choir sang “What Child Is This,” a children’s choir, consisting of two young female teenage choir singers, a young male and female child singers, appeared on the church stage. These young singers sang their own rendition of “The First Noel.” Following the children’s choir, the women’s choir came to the stage to perform their song. The women’s choir put their own do-wop feel to their rendition of the Christmas song, “Mary Mary.” Following suit, a group of four singers, featuring Len Cave, Lindsay Cave, Marti Fox, and Craig Fox, came onto the stage to sing “In the Bleak, Mid-Winter.”
The men’s choir came onto the stage to sing a funny Christmas song, “Friendly Beasts.” Each of the men that were in the choir sang or re-enacted along to a farm animal (sheep, donkey, and dove) that was present in the manger where Jesus Christ was born. Each time a sound effect was made, a singer would re-enact the characteristics of the farm animal which would make the audience laugh.
With each hymn came a Christmas song. Once the men’s choir came off the stage, the full choir joined the men on the stage once again after the proctor had ended the hymn and began to sing more Christmas songs. For the rest of the afternoon, the choir performed “Hark The Herald Angels,” followed by a beautiful instrumental turned lyrical version of the popular Christmas tunes “Christmas Eve,” “Who But The Lord,” “Behold Our God,” “Hallelujah” (which the audience and chorus sang together), followed by another hymn, a reading by another patron before continuing on to sing “All Is Well” and concluding with an acapella version of “Silent Night” that was sung by both the audience and the choir to conclude “Behold Our God.” Everyone gathered at the end of the concert with their families and singers for refreshments to conclude the yearly event.