New Projects on Deck

One door closes, another door opens. With The Soldier's Tale off my desk, I am already putting my arms around the music director and saying, "What's next?" I have desperately wanted to record a Christmas album. For years at the Kennedy Center, we hosted the Annual Washington Chamber Symphony Holiday Sing-Along which The Wall Street Journal wrote was "the hottest ticket in Washington" for the holiday season. We were often totally sold out by Labor Day! Stephen Simon, my husband the music director, wrote musical arrangements for orchestra and chorus of 2,700 (the audience plus professional vocal groups on the stage) and we all sang everything from Jingle Bells to Silent Night to Hannukah, O Hannukah, to the Hallelujah Chorus. These arrangements that everybody loved, have never been recorded, so we may be off to London before Christmas to talk to Abbey Road and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.