MYSO Offers Up "The Old Song and Dance" Holiday Concert
November 29, 2025 – Mariposa Yosemite Symphony Orchestra's annual Festive Holiday Concert for 2025 will be performed as a 2:00 P.M. Matinee ONLY on Saturday, December 20th in the Fiester Auditorium of Mariposa County High School. The concert will resume the orchestra's 21st Season/24th Year schedule of performances.
MYSO's annual Festive Holiday Concert was first performed on December 21, 2002, and as the orchestra's Founder/Conductor Les Marsden has reiterated over the years, "This concert was originally planned, and continues to be: an event where the pressures and challenges of the season may be forgotten for a couple of hours; it's a concert for YOU. It's the opportunity to leave behind gift shopping, gift-wrapping, baking, card-writing, decorating - and to gather in the warm conviviality of friends, relatives, neighbors and perfect strangers; a chance to be reminded of the friendship and human caring of this time of year, and to revel in great music played by the Yosemite region's own symphony orchestra."
Marsden has programmed a full-to-the-brim concert featuring music which for the most part is hugely familiar to the ear, if not known by title. Nearly all pieces are pulled from beloved opera, dance and ballet music (hence the concert's title,) and the repertoire will also feature a 150th Birthday Salute to the African-Anglo composer Samuel Coleridge Taylor, including his "Christmas Overture," which will open the program.
Also featured on the concert will be Coleridge-Taylor's Dance Rhapsody "The Bamboula," the dance-movement "Holberg Suite" by Edvard Grieg in a full-orchestra arrangement from the piano solo original, a Suite from Ruggero Leoncavallo's opera "Pagliacci" - from which the memorable laughing-on-the-outside-crying-on-the-inside aria "Ridi, Pagliacci" and many other melodies are drawn. A world premiere of the "Queen of the Night" aria from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera "Die Zauberflöte" newly-arranged by Marsden for MYSO Principal Clarinetist Dr. Patti Hamernik will be heard on the Eb Clarinet. Another world premiere will be Marsden's brand-new arrangement of Claude Debussy's strange, odd, Christmas Carol rarity (originally) for soprano and piano "Noël des enfants qui n'ont plus de maisons" (Noël for orphans who have no homes,) which will be sung both in French and English by the MYSO's Principal Keyboardist and trained soprano Marit Bond, with Marsden's orchestral accompaniment. The toe-tapping "Dance of the Hours" from the opera "La Gioconda" by Amilcare Ponchielli may not be known by name, but conjuring up the image of a hippo in a tutu being deviously romanced by a crocodile from Disney's 1940 film "Fantasia" may recall the piece - and for those of a certain vintage, the song "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah!" by Allan Sherman will do the same. And of course, Holiday favorites will be heard as well.
Tickets for the MYSO 2:00 P.M. Matinee Concert on Saturday, December 20th are now on sale at the usual advance-sale discount price of only $10 for Adults/$8 for Students and may be safely, securely purchased by visiting: https://tinyurl.com/MYSOHoliday25. Prices rise substantially to $15 for Adults, and $10 for Students at the door, so advance purchases are strongly urged. More information, including Marsden's usual extensive essays on the composers, their music and more: will be available on the orchestra's website: http://MYSO.Live very soon.
Visit MYSO Facebook page. View full size poster here.
The 2025 MYSO Festive Holiday Concert Poster
The orchestra's standing ovation following its Second-Season Festive Holiday Concert of December 21, 2003
(Photo credit Suzanne Logothetti Thorson)
"Cats' Christmas Party" (1910, Public Domain)
The whimsical theme of the MYSO December 20th, 2025, Matinee Concert is summed up visually by Louis William Wain's anthropomorphized-cat art obsession. This picture was chosen by Marsden for its song-and-dance, Christmas and off-kilter mien, which perfectly visualizes the orchestra's Holiday Concert.
Source: MYSO