National Lutheran Choir – Minneapolis/St. Paul | celebrating the art and culture of sacred choral music

In a Christmas Day editorial in the Star Tribune, the National Lutheran Choir was held up as a local ensemble delivering excellent choral music to the Twin Cities.

To endure the bleak midwinter of 2005-06 in Minnesota, to escape the frosty wind by finding a cozy spot amid hundreds of others now shedding their coats in the silent, darkened nave of the Basilica of St. Mary in downtown Minneapolis, then to feel from deep in the vast church a low chant growing steadily louder ("Of the Father's love begotten Ere the worlds began to be ..."), and moments later to see in long procession the black-robed National Lutheran Choir flowing up the center aisle as candles appear, lights rise, the organ thunders and everyone stands to sing a carol, to experience all of these things is to doubt profoundly the truth of Fox News' drumbeat about a War on Christmas....

"This is the center of choral nation," said Brian Newhouse of Minnesota Public Radio, "not only for the density of it, but for the quality." But why here? Newhouse credits the choral tradition that Lutherans brought from northern Europe and cultivated in their local colleges -- most notably at St. Olaf -- and then exported to other religious and secular quarters.

Read the full editorial at http://www.startribune.com/stories/561/5799919.html.