All together now, everybody sing, to the tune of Jingle Bells:

Christmas notes, Christmas notes
Music all the way,
O, what fun it is to play
So-la-so fa mi re doh

Okay, that might need a little work, but you get the idea - the Delta Music Makers have had a wonderful, joyous time helping our communities celebrate Christmas and the festive season.

And we can report, in all modesty, that the many notes we played were received by audiences with considerable enthusiasm and appreciation at our four Christmas concerts.

This was music to our ears, because we always strive to perform for our communities the works of superb composers and arrangers with the enthusiasm and appreciation they deserve.  We rehearse hard, and we want it to be right.

There’s bound to be someone who asks, “How many total notes do you suppose you played, individually and as a group?”  So we’ve assigned one of our Statistical Nerds to look into this, based on a conservative average of 45 of our 55-60 members having played in each concert (other obligations and diversions, such as earning a living and snow, sometimes preventing full turnouts of our members).  We are promised a result by the end of this report!

The important point to remember, as our founder and conductor Curt Jantzen says, is that it isn’t the individual notes that count, so much as the way they are combined, sequenced and placed in time and rhythm, and played, to produce harmonies and melodies that create beautiful and engaging and/or consoling or celebratory music.

Our own styles of Christmas harmonies and melodies, and rhythms, were evident in the first of our Yuletide concerts, performed on the afternoon of Saturday, November 28, at Tsawwassen’s Kin Centre, on Tenth Avenue, to a full house of about 170.

Here, under director and conductor Jantzen, assisted by deputy conductor Margaret Behenna, we played our complete Christmas program of 11 arrangements, seven of them of a purely Christmas flavor, the other four being lively pieces to suit tastes in all seasons.

The lineup for that program included selections for all of our four Christmas concerts:

In playing Christmas concerts, The Music Makers sometimes range beyond our own backyard here in Delta.  This season we got as far as Langley (before the snows came), for our second Christmas concert.  It was an after-dinner affair on Sunday, December 6, for the 55-Plus Club, whose members gave us a warm welcome, as always.  Langley was given the full 11-number concert that we had played at the Kin Centre.

Delta Choral Society directed by Danielle Hamilton

Delta Concert Band directed by Jim Tempest

Our last, but far from least, concert was for the patients in the Delta Hospital Extended Care unit on Sunday afternoon, December 13.  This has always been one of the most gratifying events of our year.  It is a friendly and sociable setting, very well run, where the enthusiasm of both staff and patients spreads to our players, making for enjoyment in both directions, audience-to-band, band-to-audience.

The patients were especially appreciative of The Little Drummer Boy selection, a number of them telling some of our players how much they were impressed by it, by its ever-driving beat, and its gradual, majestically growing crescendo all the way to the stirring end.

Conductor Curt, for himself and for each member of the band, concluded this concert with wishes of Merry Christmas to all, the whole year ’round.

The Extended Care Unit concert was preceded by the first real snowfall of the season.  The snow was pretty, but deprived our band of the “Langley Delegation” of three musicians who were forced to turn back due to heavier and more menacing snowfall and ice conditions in the Fraser Valley.

Maybe the weather was just taking a bit of revenge on us for not including “White Christmas” in all those notes we played!

Oh, yes, those notes - we are happy to be able to report that our Stats Nerd has reported in.  In the 11-arrangement concert, with ONE PERFORMANCE, the Music Makers produced a minimum of 167,205 notes - that being a conservative estimate of the total output of each and every instrument and device.

We considered inquiring about the methodology used in his calculations.  Did he include beats produced by our percussion department?  Should - could - those drumrolls and beats actually be classed as notes?  Then there was the question of the different parts, first, seconds and thirds in clarinets, trumpets, saxophones, etc, did he count ’em all, separately?

But now he is seriously thinking about abandoning stats entirely, in favor of just playing and enjoying the music.

That’s a good idea.