The Heart of Winter: A Choral Advent

Spend a Sunday afternoon with the Kingston Choral Society as it welcomes the Advent season at The Spire. The Heart of Winter brings together music by Haydn, Mozart, Elgar, Praetorius and Elaine Hagenberg.

Come for the blend of a full choir and listen for how different composers approach the same season. This is an afternoon concert, so there’s time to get together with a friend downtown before or after the performance.

What’s on the Advent program

The society’s program gives the afternoon several different sounds to explore. Haydn’s Little Organ Mass shares the bill with Mozart’s Laudate pueri and Elgar’s The Snow. Praetorius’s setting of In Dulci Jubilo uses two choirs, which gives you a chance to hear voices answer and overlap. The concert also includes music from Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil and Benjamin Britten’s A Hymn to the Virgin.

Gordon Lightfoot’s Song for a Winter’s Night brings a Canadian songwriter into that company. It’s a familiar melody for many listeners, and hearing it alongside older Advent music gives you a different way into the program. The choir closes with Elaine Hagenberg’s The Music of Stillness, a setting of words by poet Sara Teasdale. Try following the words in one piece and then listening for the shape of the voices in another. The program gives you room to do both.

The Spire is a regular home for Kingston choral music. Its Performance Hall is the room where the society will sing, even though the Isabel Bader Centre’s box office also lists the concert. Head to Sydenham Street for the performance. If you’re making a Sunday plan with someone who has never been to a choir concert, this is an approachable program to start with. You can come for a composer you know or simply let the sound of the choir guide you through the afternoon.

When and where

November 22, 2026 at 2:30 p.m. · Performance Hall, The Spire, 82 Sydenham Street, Kingston. See event details and tickets.