This year celebrates the 26th annual tour of John Doan’s Victorian Christmas Concert. This year’s tour includes Oregon, California, and Arizona. Tickets sell out fast, so get yours now.
The festive concert is a live version of Doan’s Emmy-nominated Public Broadcasting television special, which re-enacts what it might have been like to celebrate Christmas a century ago. “The show explores how Victorians invented many Christmas traditions we remember and quite a few we have forgotten,” said the Willamette music professor. “The 20-string harp guitar, classical banjo and ukelin are just a few of the original instruments that will be featured. The aim is to recapture the feeling of a time before radio and TV when our ancestors provided most of their own musical entertainment at home, especially during the holidays.”
Doan plays more than a dozen turn-of-the-century instruments once popular in American parlors, on vaudeville stages and in mandolin orchestras. He explains their history in a entertaining and often zany fashion, shows slides of old catalogues and archival photographs, and leads the audience in singing (or whistling) many of our most beloved carols. John will include several arrangements from his CD, “Wrapped in White: Visions of Christmas Past.”
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