Franklin Gearing Up for Annual Christmas Concert

FRANKLIN—A Hometown Christmas Concert, continuing the tradition of more than a quarter century, will return to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Franklin on Saturday, December 20 at 6 p.m. For those who arrive early, guest organist Al Fedak will perform a prelude of original Christmas selections beginning at 5:45.

According to a press release, this prelude will be played on the newly-installed John Gale Marklove pipe organ. His Opus 151 has six ranks, two divisions, one manual, six stops and 11 registers. This historic organ was gifted to St. Paul’s by the Episcopal Diocese of Syracuse and came from St. George’s Episcopal Church in Chadwicks, Oneida County, which closed in 2021. It was designed and built by this renowned Utica craftsman in 1889 and was installed in St. George’s in 1891. While Marklove built more than 250 pipe organs, this is one of only 20 that survive.

The Catskill Brass and Fedak will play a variety of sacred and secular music of their own arrangement for the Christmas season. Carleton Clay and Ben Aldridge co-direct this concert.

“Aldridge will delight the audience with a new composition written especially for this concert, as is tradition,” officials said.

Catskill Brass has performed hundreds of Christmas concerts in New York as well as in the rest of the Mid-Atlantic region and New England, officials said. This year’s performers will include Aldridge, Clay, Ralph Dudgeon, Andrew O’Dell, and Matt Oram on trumpets, Daniel Martin and Paul Blake on trombones, Frank Meredith on euphonium, and Michael DePauw on tuba.

A renowned American organist and composer, Fedak comes to St. Paul’s from Albany, where he recently retired as minister of music and arts at Westminster Presbyterian Church, Capitol Hill. “The American Organist” magazine named him “one of the country’s leading church musicians.” In addition to his career as an organist, Fedak is a widely-published composer of church music, with more than 300 choral and organ works in print.

Vocalist and clarinetist Robin Seletsky returns for the concert. She has performed extensively around the country and as far afield as India, as both a soloist and as a member of her chamber ensemble, Big Galute. Seletsky teaches locally at Hartwick College and SUNY Oneonta.

After a year’s hiatus, the Paterson family musicians also return: soprano Johana Arnold, pianist Kim Paterson and their daughter Barbara Paterson. The couple live in Delhi, and Kim Paterson is visiting from New Zealand.

During intermission, audience members can talk with old friends, meet new friends or admire the architecture. St. Paul’s church was designed by Richard Upjohn of New York City in the Gothic Revival style and completed in 1867.  It is on the National Registry of Historic Places, officials said, as is the rest of the village.

The concert will conclude with the traditional sing-along of Christmas carols.

A Hometown Christmas is presented as a gift to the community by Tom Morgan and Erna Morgan McReynolds and the Catskill Conservancy. Admission is free, but donations toward St. Paul’s restoration fund would be gratefully accepted.

St. Paul’s is on State Highway 357, at the corner of Main and Institute streets. According to organizers, parking will be available along Main, Institute, and Center streets and off Center Street in the school parking lot, which is behind the playground.

Dining on Main Street will be available at The Tulip and the Rose Cafe until 8 p.m.

After dark, the village features lighted displays of homes along Main and Center streets and 55 lit trees lining Main Street, courtesy of Franklin Rotary.