Each year, First Baptist Church Decatur has a special Christmas gift for the community, and this year’s lavish holiday concert is expected to again show grand style. The church’s sixth annual Christmas on Clairemont concert will feature “high production values” and skilled amateur musicians with guest appearances by professional musicians.
“It’s a truly spectacular event and it’s absolutely free to the community,” said Daniel Solberg, the church’s organist, who produces, directs, and hosts the annual concert.
Christmas on Clairemont features a full orchestra with an approximately 60-voice choir. “Singers come from not just our church, but from across the area,” Solberg explained, adding that staging, lighting, acoustics, and other details are at a professional level. The production is livestreamed and can be viewed on YouTube.
This year’s event will feature the Decatur Avondale Children’s Choir, Grammy award-winning tenor Victor Robertson, WABE’s Chris Chandler, operatic soprano Tiffany Uzoije, and a surprise performance by one of the stars from a CW network’s hit TV series.
“Each year we try to do something different and exciting,” Solberg said, noting that the concert was not held in 2020 or 2021 because of the COVID epidemic. However, it returned last year with Christmas on Clairemont: Keyboards and Choir, which featured four grand pianos, a departure from the traditional orchestra and choir.
Although there are no tickets and no admission fee, an offering is taken—100 percent of which is donated for humanitarian work. Since Christmas on Clairemont originated in 2016, the event has raised almost $100,000, according to Solberg. “We have generous people in our congregation who cover our production costs, so every dollar we raise goes to a humanitarian project,” he said.
The idea for the concerts came when Solberg was volunteering in Kenya with a project to bring clean water to people who had difficulty accessing it….
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