Director Laura Wiebe Dec. 14 (A. Wasserman photo)

CELEBRATORY MARIN ORATORIO CONCERT AT THE JAMES DUNN THEATER

Where during this yuletide season could a music lover have heard Bach, Bonds and a bandaleón on the same program? “Nuestra Navidad,” Marin Oratorio’s concert December 14 in the College of Marin’s James Dunn Theatre, was such a one. Directed by Laura Wiebe, it was multicultural and multilingual, featuring music from Germany, the U.S. and Argentina, and featured a chorus of 85 choral voices and three soloists backed by 20 instrumentalists: violins, oboes, cello, Spanish guitars, piano, flute, celeste, drum set and the bandaleón, Argentina’s national instrument.

The concert began with Bach’s “wake up!” Cantata BWV 140, Wachet auf ruft uns die Stimme, seven movements of choruses, recitatives, arias, and chorales based on the Parable of the Ten Virgins of the Book of Matthew that is associated with the season of Advent. In comments from the podium, the director explained that the cantata is a metaphor for Christ’s loving relationship to the faithful believer, now Zion, now Soul or Spirit. The mood is joyful, and the text is based on the Song of Songs, therefore also sensual. The foundation of the cantata is a Lutheran hymn written in 1598 during the Black Plague in Europe, which would have added great urgency to the cry “Awake!”

Expectancy and preparation were suggested by the vigorous musical dotted rhythms of the opening chorus, as the music skipped eagerly toward the union of Soul, sung by the blazingly radiant soprano Cara Gabrielson, with Jesus, the Bridegroom, sung with delicate sensibility by baritone Ryan Bradford. The first recitative by the Narrator (tenor Sergio González) announced the coming of the Bridegroom and called out the daughters of Zion to meet him. Three heavenly arias, love duets really, depicted the soul making herself ready for the wedding as the Bridegroom drew near, assuring her multiple times that he was coming.

Ms. Gabrielson’s powerful voice contrasted with Mr. Bradford’s lighter, more reflective one, and captured their distinct personalities. The baroque ensemble featured melodic projection by oboist Laura Reynolds and bassoonist Lynn Hillman. In part three of the cantata, another lovely aria began with a trio by concertmaster Ava Gehlen-Williams, cellist Francis Fedora and bassist Mark Culbertson. Ms. Gabrielson and Mr. Bradford joined in, and the now-quintet performed with rhythmic fluidity and warmth. It was with the third and final aria, where Soul and Jesus pledge that they will forever “graze on Heaven’s roses” with one another, that the performance reached a peak of ecstasy. The chorus sang with precision and good enunciation, shining most in the culminating Chorale “Let Gloria be sung to you.”

During intermission the baroque orchestra left the stage, and new instruments: bandaleón, guitars, flute and drum set were placed. The chorus then sang a performance of Margaret Bonds’ Ballad of the Brown King, a work new to me, with libretto by Langston Hughes. It was written for orchestra and tenor, but resources demanded that the instruments be stripped to two, a shame because a larger ensemble would pack more punch with a full orchestra. Mr. Culbertson and pianist Jeffrey Paul were the performers.

The piece takes its theme from the biblical description of the Wise Men/Three Kings who followed the star to the manger, “one brown king among them.” In Christian literature Balthazar is frequently depicted as a middle-aged man of African descent; the other two as Asian and European. Hughes wished to tell a part of the Nativity story that is generally overlooked. Bonds’ sparkling oratorio premiered in 1954, and as Ms. Wiebe told in pre-performance comments, she found inspiration in Hughes’ text and Bonds’ diversity of styles, which incorporated European classical music, jazz, calypso and blues. A sprightly opening was followed by a waltz, a jazz section, elements of blues and gospel, and parts with exotic harmonies. Mr. González sang the Brown King with expressiveness and kingly dignity. “We sing of the King who was tall and brown,” the chorus intoned, capturing a spirit of inclusion that suffused the whole evening. The chorus excelled in in the final Alleluia.

The program’s penultimate piece was a life of Jesus, Navidad Nuestra, by Argentinian composer Ariel Rodriguez. Written in 1964, the work is a companion piece to the composer’s innovative chorale of earlier the same year, Misa Criolla, one of the first masses not in Latin. In Spanish, this life of Jesus is from the illumined Annunciation to the desperate Flight Into Egypt. Mr. González’s tenor was a starburst of glorious sound, and here, singing in Spanish, there was magic, as though he had been born to sing this role. In the last movement (The Flight) his singing brought goose bumps as Mr. González’s pure tenor sailed into the vocal stratosphere, descended, rose and descended again, offering the poignant words that made me think of children crossing borders under duress: “Beautiful child, don’t cry my darling, soon we will arrive at a better land…” The entire chorus put their potent voices into this message, and when it was over, the audience, visibly moved, stood and applauded at length.

Ms. Wiebe conducted a concluding rousing performance of a heartrending Charles Albert Tindley song, “The Storm is Passing Over.” Spirits in the theater bubbled like champagne as the chorus and audience clapped in rhythm. This holiday program was an unqualified success.