KU presents 100th annual holiday Vespers
School of Music celebrates a century of songs of the season.
James Barnes’ memories of Vespers, the University’s cherished concert to herald the holiday season, begin in 1967, when he played trumpet in the orchestra as a freshman.
As a KU professor of composition and University Bands for 40 years, Barnes recalls decades of Vespers in the adored (though acoustically challenged) Hoch Auditorium and at the Lied Center, the far more suitable venue that has hosted the tradition since 1993.
“The only time I thought Hoch was appropriate for a concert was during Vespers,” says Barnes, f’74, g’75, who recalls the choir’s candlelight processions down the long darkened aisles. “At that time we still used real candles.”
His favorite flashback is a scene on Hoch’s third-floor outdoor balcony. For many years, Barnes led the brass choir out to the balcony to brave the frigid cold and play a welcoming fanfare for the arriving Vespers audience. One year, a wicked Saturday ice storm had coated Hoch’s roof. On Vespers Sunday, warm sunshine sent sheets of ice sliding down. “We’d be playing, and I’d say, ‘Duck!’ and the ice would fall,” Barnes recounts with a laugh. “The kids called it the ice show. It was so cold up there, I had to bribe them with candy bars.”
This year Barnes, a long-retired professor emeritus, composed a centennial tribute, “Holiday Vespers Overture, op. 173,” one of two special compositions to premiere during the afternoon and evening performances of the 100th Vespers Concert, Dec. 8 at the Lied Center.
To mark the milestone, the School of Music also commissioned a new work by Forrest Pierce, professor of composition, who wrote “I Only Want to Say (Blessings for the New Year),” for choir and four-hand piano.
In addition, the school invited past performers to return to the Hill and sing in a special Alumni Choir. As Kansas Alumni went to press in mid-November, more than 60 Jayhawks (and counting) planned to return and lift their voices.
Another graduate, who fondly recalls Lied Center Vespers as a student, will conduct the concert in his role as KU’s director of orchestral activities. Creston Herron, f’08, played violin during his undergraduate years and came home to the Hill as a faculty member in 2023.
“Every year, like clockwork, we performed in Vespers. I sat in the same seats as a student musician, and I have so many wonderful memories of this tradition,” Herron says, “so to be a part of the 100th, it’s just, oh my gosh, a joyous opportunity.”
For one and all.
Jennifer Jackson Sanner, j’81, is editor of Kansas Alumni magazine.
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