Violinist Jenny Oaks Baker (center) performed a holiday concert ‘Joy to the World’ with her musical children on Dec. 11 at the Ellen Eccles Theatre. Her children are (from left) Hannah, Sarah, Matthew and Laura (Image courtesy of Facebook).
LOGAN – If you were at the Joy to the World holiday show at the Ellen Eccles Theatre on Dec. 11, you’re excused if there were times when it seemed to you that the stage was more crowded than the audience.
In reality, of course, the audience was packed.
But so was the stage.
In addition to the headliners – renowned concert violinist Jenny Oaks Baker and her Family Four of talented musical children – there was on stage at one point in the concert an Irish vocalist, a percussionist, about 40 choir singers, an even dozen Irish step dancers, eight ballerinas, someone wailing on a bagpipe and a narrator dressed as a 1st Century A.D. shepherd.
And a partridge in a pear tree? (Sorry, couldn’t resist).
If all that baggage sounds a little odd for a Christmas concert, somehow Ms. Baker pulls it off in high style.
Ms. Baker and her family were last seen here in Cache Valley back in 2020. As I recall, she brought talented friends to that performance as well.
Ms. Baker bills herself as “America’s violinist” and that’s no exaggeration. She has performed as a soloist at Carnegie Hall, the Lincoln Center, the Library of Congress and with symphony orchestras throughout the world.
Musical talent seems to be in her genes and she’s passed it onto her four children.
Her daughter Laura, 22, plays the violin almost as well as her mother and also percussion instruments. Hannah, 20, plays piano beautifully when she’s not studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London. At 18, daughter Sarah studies the cello at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. The baby of the family is Matthew, who at 17 plays both classical and electric guitar.
Despite its biblical theme, their Joy to the World stage show had a distinctly Celtic flavor.
Much of that was due to the singing of Irish soprano Alex Sharpe. In addition to her breathtaking renditions of familiar carols and hymns, Ms. Sharpe performed “Oichi Chiuin (Silent Night)” in her native Gaelic and the 12th Century Irish folk tune, the “Wexford Carol.”
The Logan Institute Choirs periodically lent their collective voices to backing up Ms. Baker and her children, particularly on a haunting version of “The Carol of the Bells.”
The narration for Joy to the World was performed by Jason F. Wright, the bestselling author of Christmas Jars, Scar Dakota and many others.
Ballerinas borrowed from the Cache Civic Ballet also performed through the holiday concert.