Our 33rd Annual Candlelight Carol Service Join us as we celebrate Christmas: Sing your favorite carols! Enjoy the choir, a candlelight service and a reading of A Visit from St. Nicholas by a "surprise" Chelsea celebrity Sunday, December 16th at 6:00 pm. St. Peter’s Church, 346 West 20th Street
		Details on the Event Chelsea Community Church, a lay-led nondenominational Christian Church “for people of all faiths,” will hold its 33rd Annual Candlelight Carol Service on Sunday, December 16th at 6 PM. The service will take place in historic St. Peter’s Church, 346 West 20th Street, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues.  There is no charge for the event; an offering will be accepted.  A Chelsea neighborhood celebrity, to be announced, will read Clement Clarke Moore’s famous poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas.”  St. Peter’s Church stands on land that was part of Moore’s farm. Chelsea Community Church was founded in 1975.  It welcomes people of all faiths and uncertain faith to its regular service held every Sunday at 11:45 AM at St. Peter’s Church.			Details on the Music This year’s choir will perform an unusually broad range of anthems, hymns, carols, and popular standards, including many rarely heard pieces.  Charles Villiers Stanford's “Arise, Shine” (1905), to the familiar text from Isaiah, will be heard in one of the first performances of Jeremy Dibble's new scholarly edition.  Charles Ives' "The Collection" (1920) will be performed complete, with the rarely heard choral response.  Other rarities include Bob Chilcott's hard-driving contemporary-gospel setting of St. Germanus's 7th Century poem "Mighty Wonder,” written for the London Adventist Chorale; P.C. Buck's nearly forgotten “The Flowering Manger” (1919), a tender filigree for women's voices on a poem by the great English writer Sylvia Townsend Warner; and “Dost Thou in a Manger Lie” (1918), a madrigal-carol based on a 15th Century text, by T. Tertius Noble, longtime organist-choirmaster of St. Thomas Fifth Avenue.  The program will conclude with a special arrangement of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" by Chelsea Community Church Music Director Christopher Johnson, featuring the original lyrics. Johnson, who was recently appointed Music Director, was previously Director, Music (USA), at Oxford University Press, where he also conducted the OUP Choir and co-founded and served as managing director of the Oxford Summer Institutes, an annual music festival and training-ground for composers, singers, and conductors.  Tom Sarff, organist-choirmaster of Christ Episcopal Church New Brighton, Staten Island, will accompany on piano and organ.