FRANKLIN — Continuing the tradition of more than a quarter century, “A Hometown Christmas Concert” will return to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church at 307 Main St. Franklin at 6 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 16. Guest organist Al Fedak will perform a prelude of original Christmas selections beginning at 5:45 p.m.
According to a media release, the prelude will be the debut performance of a newly-installed John Gale Marklove pipe organ.
The Catskill Brass and Fedak will play a variety of sacred and secular music of their own arrangement for the Christmas season. Carleton Clay and Ben Aldridge will co-direct the concert and Aldridge will perform a new composition written especially for the concert.
Catskill Brass has performed hundreds of Christmas concerts in New York as well as in the rest of the Mid-Atlantic region and New England. This year’s performers will include Aldridge, Clay, Ralph Dudgeon, Andrew O’Dell and Matt Oram on trumpets, Daniel Martin and Paul Blake on trombones, Frank Meredith on Euphonium, and Michael DePauw on tuba.
They will be joined by three members of the regional musical community, soprano Johana Arnold, clarinetist Robin Seletsky and pianist Kim Paterson.
A renowned American organist and composer, Fedak comes to St. Paul’s from Albany where he recently retired as Minister of Music and Arts at Westminster Presbyterian Church, Capitol Hill. American Organist magazine named him “one of the country’s leading church musicians.”
The evening will conclude with a traditional sing-along of Christmas carols.
A Hometown Christmas is presented as a gift to the community by Tom Morgan and Erna Morgan McReynolds and the Catskill Conservancy. Admission is free, but donations will be accepted toward St. Paul’s restoration fund.
Parking will be available along Main, Institute, and Center streets and off Center Street in the school parking lot, which is behind the playground.