Any producer will reluctantly admit that finding an audience in these challenging economic times is no small feat, but there must have been magic in the air guiding The Salvation Army's production and promotion team to nearly filling Roy Thomson Hall's (RTH) 2,630 seats on a bitterly cold Saturday night, December 13, and staging an impressive performance with a message.

With some 275 singers, 30 musicians, storyteller/emcee, vocal soloist, organist, special effects stagecraft, and multimedia support, this year's Christmas celebration concert could arguably claim being one of Toronto's largest stage productions.

Much of the responsibility for the concert falls into the hands of Artistic Director Major Leonard Ballantine. “It's always hard work bringing so many divergent groups together under a single baton for a performance like this,” Ballantine says. The 2008 Festival Chorus, for example, is a bit of an umbrella title for some 18 church choirs, geographically separated by great distances, arriving from Toronto, Peterborough, Windsor, Mississauga, London, Guelph, Burlington, and Brampton, for example. Ballantine provided the music and arrangements to each choir earlier in the year, allowing them to rehearse separately─not an ideal situation, but one Ballantine ensures will work by personally traveling to each group for a session prior to all the groups gathering at Roy Thomson Hall for their one and only full dress rehearsal together the afternoon of the big show. “It works,” Ballantine says, “because I know all these people; we know the music; we know each other; and for all of us, it's not just singing, it's communicating our beliefs.”

What about master organist Giles Bryant, you ask. “With all the air coming from pipes behind the choir, some say the organ helps push those beautiful voices across the stage and into the audience. Not a bad job I've got and I love it.”

This year's storyteller and emcee, actor Colin Fox, echoed Ballantine's comments. “An actor rarely writes his own part. His job is to deliver the text written by someone else in a way that is memorable and meaningful.” Fox read O.Henry's 1906 short story, Gift of the Magi, perhaps one of the author's most famous works. It's the story of a couple so in love and so poor facing Christmas with little more than $1.87 to send on a gift and realizing how far $1.87 can be stretched when the need is great and the love so strong─one audience member was overheard remarking: “It's like the Kettles, isn't it. A little goes a long way.” And Dickens' A Christmas Carol, first published in December, 1843, flowing on Fox's dulcet tones, warmed the heart of every listener in the great symphony hall: “God bless us, every one.”

Like Fox and Ballantine, Canadian Staff Band Bandmaster John Lam agrees: “We're given the text, the notes and melody, but the feeling of the music comes right from the heart of every musician here. Music is our ministry. The traditional Salvation Army band dates to the founding of The Salvation Army in the 1800s. It's always been a part of our worship and street ministries. We play our faith and beliefs. The audience must feel it too.”

Communicating the meaning of the written word through song is what Captain Margaret Davis does extraordinarily well. “It's my gift from God,” she reminds anyone and everyone. From the secular It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year to the traditional French carol, Angels We Have Heard on High, the audience was mesmerized by the power and clarity of Davis' voice.

Closing the concert's first half was one of the tunes most closely related to this season: Irving Berlin's White Christmas, performed by the Festival Chorus and Staff Band, and, right on cue, as the audience joins in, snow begins to fall over chorus and band from high above the stage─a delightful bit of stagecraft requiring special preparation and coordination by RTH Stage Manager Krista MacIsaac and her stage crew.

Perhaps “Christmas with The Salvation Army” producer Captain John Murray said it best: “This year, maybe more than in previous, we've partnered with caring community organizations such as Classical 96.3FM and AM/740 in getting the word out that this is an event worth attending. It's unique and special and a wonderful way to celebrate Christmas─a season of love and hope.”

As the evening's concert drew to a close, Commissioner William Francis, Territorial Commander, took centre stage reflecting on a Christmas story of his own─one from an earlier time in his own ministry─a story of a homeless woman named Mary, alone on Christmas Eve, receiving a helping hand.

Like Magi and many of O.Henry's classic short stories, this year's Christmas with The Salvation Army reminds us of the poor and marginalized working classes in need of warmth, a meal, a smile, unselfish love, and hope.