If it’s December, you can be pretty sure that our concert-life is turning very Baroque. That is to say, there will be a bevvy of choral, orchestral, and chamber performances featuring music of the Baroque era (ca. 1600 to ca. 1750). This is perhaps to some extent because we associate the holidays with masterworks such as Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and Magnificat, Handel’s Messiah, and Vivaldi’s Gloria.

But there is also something joyous and hopeful in this music that makes it feel somehow intrinsically appropriate to the season. “There is an energy and an excitement that we feel with Baroque music,” said Bruce Sorrell, who this December 5th leads the Kansas City Chamber Orchestra in A Very Baroque Christmas, with music of Bach and Telemann that features local solo performers.

“There is a beauty in the melodies, an accessibility,” he added, “and because it is so strongly tied to dance, it connects with our bodies.” Moreover much of Baroque music, particularly that of J.S. Bach, “contains a deep spirituality.”

The Chamber Orchestra has been performing holiday concerts since 1988: These programs began just a year after Bruce and his team established the Chamber Orchestra, partly as a means of offering supplemental employment to Kansas City performers. (Most members are Kansas City Symphony musicians and/or teach in the region.)

This year’s program features Symphony Violist Duke Lee as soloist in Telemann’s Concerto in G major. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 will feature Symphony Violinist Anne-Marie Brown and Flutists Christina Webster and Adrienne Garstang.

The concert begins with an arrangement for string orchestra (by the world-renowned composer/arranger Michi Wiancko) of the Bach Chaconne. “Michi is a violinist herself,” said Bruce, a seasoned conductor who is also executive director of Chamber Music Tulsa, “so she imbues her arrangements with a kind of string-player’s sensitivity.”

The nearly-all-Bach concert concludes with the composer’s Suite No. 3 in D major, which in addition to the famous “Air” features parts for trumpets and drums that convey a celebratory mood that many of us begin to feel around this time of year.

—By Paul Horsley

A Very Baroque Christmas! takes place this Tuesday, December 5th at Old Mission United Methodist Church. For tickets go to kcchamberorchestra.org or call 816-960-1324.

To reach Paul Horsley, performing arts editor, send an email to paul@kcindependent.com or find him on Facebook (paul.horsley.501) or Twitter/Instagram (@phorsleycritic).