Let the spectacular sights and sounds of Christmas fill your heart as you join the Singing Christmas Trees 300-voice choir for performances, continuing through Dec. 7.
It features traditional Christmas songs and dancing Santas, as well as an inspiring Nativity story with shepherds and kings in its 53rd season at New Hope Community Church, 11731 S.E. Stevens Road in Clackamas (singing christmastree.org). Special guests include 11 local high school choirs, the Jefferson Dancers, Timothy Greenidge, Coral Walterman and Erin Tamblyn.
But will it be returning to Portland?
With the city of Happy Valley and Clackamas County planning a large development that would raze New Hope Community Church, Tamblyn expects that this will be the Singing Christmas Trees second and final season in Clackamas. But he promises that the tree will have a 54th season. Tree staff are busily researching options, including moving back to the Keller Auditorium, where the tree had been for 35 years until the 2014 move to the 2,000-seat New Hope auditorium.
For us, the difference between the Keller and the New Hope auditorium is the cost-saving and the intimacy, says Greg Tamblyn, executive producer. The Keller was a perfect home for the tree in seating 3,000 people and being publicly owned. In the heart of Portland, the Keller added credibility to the tree with the Broadway shows and operas performing there.
The Singing Christmas Tree, founded in 1962, has had to move before. After its original venue, the Benson High School auditorium, which seated 1,400, flooded in 1964, the tree moved briefly to the 1,000- person First Assembly of God Church, and then to the 3,500-seat Oriental Theatre from 1965-67, after which the Oriental was razed.
