Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and the African-American vocal quartet Kings Return have each performed for the La Jolla Music Society in recent seasons, but not on the same program. For Saturday’s nonpareil Christmas concert at The Conrad, these two musical forces of nature combined for an exhilarating evening of musical virtuosity and spiritual elation.
While DiDonato is celebrated in major opera houses around the globe as a diva whose coloratura prowess in 18th-century opera is unmatched, the Dallas-based Kings Return ensemble is rooted in the black church’s rich improvisatory a cappella vocal tradition. And if these two musical arenas seem distant, DiDonato explained early in the program that her father was a church choir director, and she began her vocal journey at the age of eight singing in church.
On Saturday, these two musical worlds merged with a sublime convergence that radiated celestial benediction.
They opened with spirited familiar carols, Noël Regney and Gloria Shayne’s ubiquitous “Do You Hear What I Hear,” John Rutter’s contemporary ballad “Candlelight Carol,” and George Ratcliffe Woodward’s “Ding Dong Merrily on High” set to a now familiar ancient French secular tune.
The sonority of the male quartet Kings Return—Vaughn Faison and JE McKissic tenors, Jamall Williams baritone, and Gabe Kunda bass—is a beautifully balanced amalgam of gospel, doo-wop, jazz, and surprising harmonic cadences that would make the late Peter Schickele envious.
Arrangements of traditional sacred songs interspersed the carols: Kings Return supplied their gospel-inspired take on the spiritual “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” and Joyce DiDonato intoned John Jacob Niles folk-inspired “I Wonder as I Wander” deftly accompanied by tenor Vaughn Faison on guitar. Kings Return courageously deconstructed Adolphe Adam’s “O Holy Night,” and DiDonato offered a setting of “Ave Maria” adapted from the Intermezzo of Pietro Mascagni’s opera Cavalleria Rusticana.
More challenging and unexpected were the evening’s fusions: a clever medley by Kings Return and DiDonato of arias and choruses from Handel’s Messiah and Kings Return offering a lively scat rendition of hits from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker ballet.
And DiDonato sujrprised her opera fans with an aptly snarled version of “You’re a Mean One, Mister Grinch” from the musical The Grinch Who Stole Christmas by Albert Hague and Theodor Geisel.
The concert was presented by the La Jolla Music Society on December 7, 2024, in La Jolla’s Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center.