M E D I A  A D V I S O R Y

November 18, 2016 – Richmond, Virginia Join the Richmond Symphony for a celebration of the season with Let It Snow! on Saturday, December 3 at 8pm and Sunday, December 4 at 3pm. This winter wonderland of music includes holiday favorites such as “Santa Baby,” “Sleigh Ride,” and “Here Comes Santa Claus” and is the perfect annual event to include in your RVA holiday tradition. Joining the Symphony on stage for this holiday celebration will be the Richmond Symphony Chorus under the direction of Erin R. Freeman, guest vocalist Sarah Kate Walston (soprano), and the City Singers Youth Choirs under the direction of Leslie Dripps. Both holiday concerts will be led by Associate Conductor, Chia-Hsuan Lin and held at the Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Arts Center. Audiences are encouraged to participate by bringing their own sleigh bells. A limited number of bells will be distributed at the theater.

Tickets start at $10 online at richmondsymphony.com or by calling 1.800.514.ETIX. College student tickets are $7 at the Carpenter Theatre box office with valid student ID.

This concert is sponsored by Hunton & Williams and The London Company. The media sponsor is Richmond Times-Dispatch.

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Chia-Hsuan Lin, conductor, bio
Erin R. Freeman, director, bio
Sarah Kate Walston, soprano, bio
Learn more about City Singers Youth Choirs

About the Richmond Symphony
Founded in 1957, the Richmond Symphony is the largest performing arts organization in Central Virginia. The organization includes an orchestra of more than 70 professional musicians, the 150-voice Richmond Symphony Chorus and more than 260 students in the Richmond Symphony Youth Orchestra programs. Each season, more than 200,000 members of the community enjoy concerts, radio broadcasts, and educational outreach programs. The Richmond Symphony is partially funded by the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

About the Richmond Symphony Chorus
James Erb organized the all-volunteer Richmond Symphony Chorus in 1971 for a December performance of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, under guest conductor Robert Shaw. For 36 years, Erb continued to direct and build the Chorus to reflect the Symphony’s high standards. Erin Freeman assumed leadership of the Chorus at the start of its 2007–08 season. The repertoire for its selected volunteer membership has included most of the standard repertoire for chorus and orchestra: Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, St. John Passion and Mass in B Minor, Haydn’s Creation, Beethoven’s Symphony No.9 and Choral Fantasy, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Requiem settings by Mozart, Brahms, Verdi and Faure, Mahler’s Symphony No.2, Vaughan Williams’ Sea Symphony and all of Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe, in addition to a number of shorter choral-orchestral works. Special projects have included a performance and recording of Mahler Symphony No. 8 with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, under the direction of JoAnn Falletta, a performance with the Richmond Symphony in the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and a re-creation of the Chorus’s inaugural performance of Missa Solemnis, under the direction of Erin Freeman. In February, 2017, members of the Chorus will perform Poulenc’s Gloria at Carnegie Hall, with Erin Freeman conducting.  On April 28^th and in honor of its 45^th anniversary, the Chorus will present an all-choral concert in tribute to its founder, James Erb, at Second Baptist Church.