Under the baton of Director Kurt Pearsall, the Capitol Pops Concert Band wrapped up its 18th season at an open concert featuring a dozen of the season’s most popular tunes. The sanctuary at Christ the King Lutheran Church in Orangevale, where the band performed its last set of the season, was filled with folks in a music-loving holiday mood on Thursday, December 10th at 7 p.m.

The one-hour performance featured three traditional Christmas hymns, “Away in a Manger,” “Do You Hear What I Hear,” and “Silent Night,” as well as some winter songs like “Frosty the Snowman” and “White Christmas.” Soloist Susan Skinner was on-hand to wow the crowd with her silky vocal accompaniment to “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”

Founded in 1997, the Capitol Pops Concert Band has performed a rich variety of musical favorites. Thousands of music lovers throughout Northern California have enjoyed this lively and talented group, based in Citrus Heights. They are a self-supporting, not-for-profit musical community consisting of about 65 musicians from a wide cross-section of the Sacramento region.

One of the most creative performances of the evening at Christ the King was Mark Glover’s recitation of Clement Clark Moore’s famous poem, “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas,” the words of which the band interspersed with samples of tunes humorously fitting the gist of each verse. For example, when Glover recited the famous line naming each of the “eight tiny reindeer,” the band chimed in with the melody of “Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here!” Only the savviest name-that-tune fans in the audience could catch every musical reference, and this obviously delighted Pearsall, who led the band with a wink and a nod.

Toward the end of the concert, a truly good time was had by all when the church’s pastor, Scott Guemmer, and Susan Skinner led the crowd in rousing sing-along to a Christmas medley, which ended with the pastor and the vocalist dancing in the aisle. When eight o’clock rolled around, no one wanted the fun to end, so the band responded with a welcome encore.

Concert-goers were encouraged to donate new or gently used coats as part of a national clothing drive called One Warm Coat. This San Francisco-based organization provides warm clothes to the needy throughout Northern California. It has been organizing coat drives since 1992, donating more than 4 million of them since then and supporting 3,000 coats drives each year.