Abundant music events await local residents and their visitors during the holiday season. From spectacular, multi-choir offerings to more intimate performances, attending one or all of the Bay Area’s special concerts becomes an act of healing and harmony. The opportunity to hear — and see — the grand vestiges of our shared humanity reinforce the unifying spirit of the season. Following are seven suggestions for celebration and ringing in the new year.
Berkeley Symphony
Start December by supporting one of the area’s most active, long-lasting orchestras. Oakland Symphony’s “Winter Promenade,” held Dec. 4 in the gorgeous Berkeley City Club, is a fundraiser for the symphony’s 2025-26 programs. Proceeds from the event will also support the organization’s search for a new Music Director and the award- winning Music in the Schools program. The evening includes a buffet dinner, seasonal cocktails, and musical selections performed by several of the symphony’s world-class musicians. Be sure to pay attention to the “Fables and Folklore” concert in January 2026 that launches the new season. A marvelous program (Jan. 25) brings to Berkeley’s Congregational church the folks tunes, myths, and stories, from divergent cultures spanning the globe.
“Winter Promenade”, Dec. 4, 5 p.m. at Berkeley City Club,, 2315 Durant Avenue, Berkeley.
Piedmont Community Church
The 2025 15th annual Christmas Concert this year explores an intriguing theme. Entitled “Christmas, Through the Eyes of a Child,” the Piedmont-based orchestra and choir suggest the concerts provide a glimpse through a wide, world view lens that offers refreshing innocence, hopefulness, and wonder. General admission includes a gala reception with holiday food and drink. People interested in Patron Seating or able to offer donations beyond the standard ticket price are welcome to learn more online at the church website. The opportunity to receive and give joy and express gratitude is abundant in this treasured tradition.
Christmas Concert performances are Saturday, Dec. 6, 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, Dec. 7, 7:30 p.m. Piedmont Community Church, 400 Highland Avenue, Piedmont.
Piedmont Center for the Arts
Spend an afternoon with the “In the Tradition” jazz and pop piano trio. Bill Jackman, Michael Jones, and Albert Brooks will kick off the holiday season with a program of holiday music that includes 16th century traditional songs to “O Tannenbaum” to the mid-20th century favorites. Doors open at 4:15 p.m. Tickets HERE
Afterglow Chorus
This joyful ensemble’s holiday concert, “A Not So Silent Night,” opens Dec. 7 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Oakland. A second performance Dec. 13 provides another opportunity to hear sweet harmonies arising from classic carols, spirituals, Motown tunes, classical music masterworks, and holiday tunes. This year, The Temptations’
version of “Silent Night” is a special highlight. The choir includes professional vocalist, music teachers, and highly skilled singers who, after additions, are invited to join the 40-member choir. The troupe’s command of a broad repertoire is shown off to great advantage during concerts throughout the year, but made especially luminous in these annual, end-of-year performances. Tickets were selling swiftly but still available in late November. Make the concert a family holiday tradition and find spiritual renewal for all.
A “Not So Silent Night”, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church Oakland, 114 Montecito Avenue, 4 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
San Francisco Girls Chorus with New Century Chamber Orchestra
The venerable girls choir joins the equally acclaimed orchestra for “In Winter’s Glow.” Led by their remarkable Artistic Director, Valérie Sainte-Agathe, up to 250 cherubic voices project serenity and joy in the Dec. 11 concert at First Church UCC Berkeley at 7:30 p.m.
New Century Music Director/Concertmaster Daniel Hope governs the orchestra and, with Sainte-Agathe, presents familiar and new works, including a premiere by Composer-in-Residence Nicolás Lell Benavides. Other pieces on the program range from traditional carols to music by Vivaldi, Britten, Heggie, Muhly, and more. The concert repeats in locations in Belvedere Tiburon and San Francisco; presenting second options for East Bay folks unable to attend closer to home.
CAL Performances
Count on the wonderful CAL Performances to dive headfirst into holiday happiness with not one, but two productions. First up is the Soweto Gospel Choir with “Peace,” a concert Dec. 14 showcasing the multi-Grammy-winning South African cultural ambassadors return to Berkeley. There are gospels, spirituals, popular tunes that can find no greater outlet than this collective of vocalists. Vibrantly dressed, physically expressive, the choir is dazzling and reliably delivers year-after-year.
Follow that all- ages fun with the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus’ annual Holiday Spectacular Dec. 20. A two-performance day boasts roughly two hundred tenors, baritones, and basses dressed in unquestionably ugly Christmas sweaters and elf outfits. The chorus calls its concert “a little naughty, but mostly very nice.” Jump to get tickets as soon as possible, because the second show was added due to popular demand.
Find tickets to Soweto Gospel Choir and San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus: CAL Performances, Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley campus
Oakland Symphony
Oakland Symphony Conductor Kedrick Armstrong and Youth Conductor Kongdee Saikeo might be the two luckiest people in the world. Imagine leading a cornucopia of top-tier musicians beginning with Oakland Symphony Chorus and rocketing into sonic bliss with the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir, Napa High School Chamber Choir, guest artists such as vocalist Tiffany Austin and PHER, among other magnetic soloists. The additional local ensembles—East Bay Singers and Best Intentions—are the proverbial icing on the cake. Joining Dec. 15 under the masthead, “Let Us Break Bread Together,” the annual event this year pays tribute to the legends of disco. As one legendary disco-
era song suggests, this is a moment to “celebrate good times.” Doing it together sweetens the experience and is sure to chase out any Scrooge-like gloom and leave audiences filled with unbounded joy.
Oakland Symphony’s Let Us Break Bread Together”, Paramount Theatre, Dec. 15, 4-6 p.m. Tickets and more information HERE
Kitka Women’s Vocal Ensemble
If Kitka’s annual “Wintersongs” concerts are not yet part of a person’s or family’s tradition, jump on the wagon and join the group’s marvelous exploration of Eastern European songs. Illuminated by the strength and unity of the ensemble’s voices, this program exudes hope and offers pathways to global renewal throughout the world.
Songs rooted in Balkan, Baltic and Slavic cultures have the all-women troupe circling through ancient creation myths, the bonds of friendship, seasonal cycles in nature and in life, and more. The concerts, in addition to delighting the auditory senses, raise awareness of the ongoing war in Ukraine. Discovering the power of gathering together during times of suffering and conflict, song, dance, and storytelling are become paramount. Kitka offers a kernel of hope for humanity and inspiration to enter the new year with awakened hearts and minds.
Kitka Women’s Vocal Ensemble, “Wintersongs”, Dec. 18-20, 8:00-10:00 p.m. St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito Avenue, Oakland.