A Light to Lighten the Darkness

The Adelfos Ensemble chamber choir will inaugurate Santa Barbara’s holiday choral season with a concert on Tuesday, December 5, 2023 at 7:30pm at Trinity Episcopal Church on State Street. Music Director, Temmo Korisheli and Associate Conductor, Steven Browning Thomson lead the ensemble in Benjamin Britten’s beloved A Ceremony of Carols, Op.28 with Southern California concert harpist Ellie Choate. The concert will also feature the ensemble’s treble voices in Dancing Day, a cycle of traditional Christmas carols by John Rutter, with our men’s voices presenting 2 original Christmas carols and an arrangement of the Hanukkah melody “Maoz Tsur” by the late UCSB Music professor and founder of The Schubertians, Carl Zytowski.

📅 Date: December 5, 2023

🕢 Time: 7:30 p.m.

📍 Venue: Trinity Episcopal Church, 1500 State Street

The Adelfos Ensemble was founded in 2004 as a men’s a-cappella ensemble and pursued that path until 2010, when it became a mixed voice choral ensemble. Temmo Korisheli took over direction of the group from Dr. Michael Eglin in 2008. Our goal is to offer the best of a-cappella and other choral music to audiences in the Santa Barbara area through live performances, radio broadcasts, and recordings. The group programs a broad repertoire of music spanning more than a millennium, from ancient chant and Renaissance motets to folksong arrangements and contemporary works. Adelfos Ensemble exists to explore the wide world of choral literature and, as the Santa Barbara News-Press observed, to “move right and left of center in the choral tradition.”
About the Director Temmo Korisheli is an active performer in many musical styles, especially medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque. Recent early-music engagements have included concerts with Ensemble Ciaramella in Los Angeles, Victoria, and New York, and with the Texas Early Music Project in Austin. He has been on staff with the Amherst Early Music Festival of New England for the past 22 years, where he has collaborated with many luminaries of the early-music world; he also serves as bursar of the Festival. Mr. Korisheli has appeared as soloist with ensembles such as the Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra, the New York Collegium under Andrew Parrott, and regional oratorio societies; as a guest artist with several university early music programs around the state and beyond; and sang for many years in the UCSB Cappella Cordina. He is a founding member of the UCSB Middle East Ensemble, sings frequently in the Opera Santa Barbara Chorus, and plays clawhammer banjo, and, this December, celebrates 20 seasons of spreading Christmas cheer with the Santa Barbara Holiday Carollers. Mr. Korisheli is assistant music director at All Saints’-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Montecito. He holds the MA and PhD (ABD) degrees in historical musicology from UCSB, where he studied with Alejandro Planchart and William Prizer and where he presently supervises the Music Library.

Akathist of Thanksgiving

by Adelfos Ensemble (Men) | Performed 2014 at All Saints By The Sea

Sopranos
Anna Aboud, Erin Bonski-Evans, Christine Hollinger, Jennifer Johnson, Molly Markstrum, Lee Naftali, Zoe Nathan, Emma Parker, Adelle Rodkey, Sarah Slezak 

Altos
Kris Aylesworth, Susie Groves, Holly Hoffman, Lindsay Lettow, DeeDee Nussmeier, Marliiz Romano, Margot Roseman, Rochelle Yoshida

Tenors
Myron Aguilar, Noam Fields-Meyer, Ryan Girley Andy Lentz, Matt Moore, Karl Sandin, Temmo Korisheli

Basses 
Mark Cariillo, Matt Evans, Jack Fisher, David Hodges, Bruce Kendall, Bob Lally, Erik Rodkey, Steven Thomson, Dan Tierney

Support Adelfos

We’re a non-profit organization that relies mostly on donations to sustain our ability to perform top quality music. Each singer is unpaid. We do it because we love sharing our passion for choral music with the community.

100% of your contributions go directly towards items such as music, accompanist, recording fees, performance and venue costs.

All donations are tax deductible.  We appreciate your support!

Mailing Address: PO Box 92 ~ Santa Barbara CA 93102