(Music 1) The Messiah - G.F. Handel

BUY ME (If this link doesn't work, go to the Wheaton College Bookstore website and search for "Messiah.")

What can I say? I'm a huge fan of this work in general, but to be honest, I'm in this recording. I started singing in The Messiah when I was in eighth grade. Every year, the Hillcrest community puts together a choir of between 100 and 300 members who meet weekly to rehearse for an early December performance. There is always a huge turnout. When I was young, they performed in the chapel, but the crowd outgrew the seating capacity (and standing capacity), and for awhile the choir was too large for the stage, so we sang on the bleachers of the school's basketball courts. That way there was plenty of space for people to bring their own chairs to augment the chairs from the chapel, picnic tables, and additional bleachers. In 2001, when there were riots throughout Jos the weekend before 9/11 and curfews were in place all fall, they postponed the concert until Easter and concentrated more on the Easter numbers than the Christmas ones.

I missed singing in The Messiah this year because of Timothy's arrival. I had a pretty dimished lung capacity by the time rehearsals started in August, and it would have been difficult to sing in the performance with a three-week-old needing to eat somewhere between "All We Like Sheep" and "Lift Up Your Heads."

My senior year in college, I found out that the Wheaton College Conservatory of Music would be performing The Messiah with a guest conductor, Maestro John Nelson...the year after I graduated. As it turned out, I still lived in the area that next year and was a part of the community choir, the West Suburban Choral Union, which joined in the performance. Yes! So I got to sing this amazing piece of music under an equally amazing conductor. How cool is that?! And now I'll forever be spoiled; no performance of the Jos Community Choir will ever quite compare!

This is the ultimate CD for the Christmas season!