Boston Pops Holiday Concert Set for Jorgensen, 12/7

In a year when Boston reigns supreme on the World Series stage, the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra with Conductor Keith Lockhart will bring its winning holiday fare, complete with the trademark "Sleigh Ride," an audience carol sing and a visit from Jolly Old St. Nick, to Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday, Dec. 7, 2013, at 8 p.m.

Guest bass-baritone Justin Hopkins will perform the Vaughan Williams "Fantasia on Christmas Carols" and, in the second act, "Mary, Did You Know? Christmas Is A-Comin'." Hopkins burst onto the international opera scene in 2010, performing multiple roles in Macbeth (named Opernwelt magazine's "Production of the Year") with the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels. Hopkins made his Carnegie Hall debut last season, singing Sir John Berkley in Der Vampyr with the American Symphony Orchestra and Leon Botstein, and his London debut in A Stranger Here Myself: Kurt Weill on Broadway with the BBC Concert Orchestra under Keith Lockhart.

In addition, the 90-strong Metropolitan Chorale of Brookline, under its 10-year veteran conductor Lisa Graham, will perform an array of holiday arrangements. The chorale performed Karl Jenkins' The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace in May 2013 at New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall and recently has performed Duke Ellington's Sacred Concert (a jazz-themed choral and tap dance work), Ralph Vaughan Williams' Sea Symphony, and such choral masterpieces as Mendelssohn's Elijah, Brahms's German Requiem, and Bach's Mass in B Minor.

In 1995 Keith Lockhart became the twentieth conductor of the Boston Pops, and has since presided over 1,500 concerts, 12 recordings, 73 television shows and 38 national tours, as well as performances at Carnegie Hall and Radio City Music Hall, and overseas in Japan and Korea. Building on Arthur Fiedler and John Williams' traditions, he has commissioned new works and garnered the orchestra's first Grammy nomination. Lockhart led the June 2012 Diamond Jubilee Concert for Queen Elizabeth II, and serves as artistic director of the Brevard Music Center summer institute and festival in North Carolina. Back home he presides at the annual Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular, broadcast nationally on CBS to 10 million viewers.

Jorgensen was named Best College/University Performing Arts Center in the Hartford Advocate Best of Hartford Readers' Poll for 2012 and 2013.

Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts is located at 2132 Hillside Road on the UConn campus in Storrs. Regular tickets are $66, $56 and $36. For tickets and information, call the Box Office at 860.486.4226, Monday through Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., or order online at jorgensen.uconn.edu. Convenient free parking is available across the street in the North Garage.

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