Christmas Concert Showcases Dynamic Music Program at Hillcrest
Pax Venit. Peace has come. This theme drove hundreds to attend the annual Hillcrest Christmas Concert. The tradition carries more than nostalgia for Christmas concerts as the year winds down.
Writing in the Hillcrest Beacon in 1941, Irvin Lofthus was a sophomore highlighting the impact of music at Hillcrest Academy. “Music expresses the prevailing moods of the people, we as Christians are especially interested in directing the powers of music into channels useful in God’s service.” That sentiment is alive and real now 80 years after it was first penned in a dorm room at Hillcrest Academy.
Hillcrest opened the concert with a bell choir, ushering attendees into the theme of peace as the melodies harmonized in the new expansive fellowship hall at Bethel Lutheran Church. The echos of the chimes followed concertgoers into the worship center, where students gathered on stage under a soft blue light, waiting in anticipation to bring the theme of peace has come to life.
Hillcrest’s band and orchestra opened the concert. The syncopated rhythms from the percussion section guided the flutes to carry melodies as the selected songs directed the attention of the audience away from the individual issues they carried into the hall to unite on a path of a shared experience in the concert.
The Hillcrest choir directed those attentions to an understanding of the theme. One song begged the Lord to “send me comfort and joy,” while another directed attention to find that comfort to be found in a manger in the Christ-child.
To close the concert, Hillcrest’s choir flooded the aisles of the worship center. They sang a song declaring peace, a rendition of the carol Silent Night, draping a gentle peace over the audience to close the concert.
What Irvin Lofthus wrote about the music program in the 1940s, then under the direction of Prof. William Windahl, was testified in Hillcrest’s concert this month. Students are being trained to direct the powers of music “into channels useful in God’s service.”