We all have memorable Christmases,
seasons when the holiday spirit enlivens the opportunities before us to create a perfect mix of emotion and experience. For John DeMain, artistic director of the Madison Symphony Orchestra, the most memorable Christmas came early in life, but its reverberations have colored his
holiday season ever since.
“My most vivid Christmas memory came when I was in kindergarten and sang ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ at the school Christmas concert. I made the rotogravure section of the newspaper,” says DeMain, 64. “Not to
brag, but I had a beautiful boy soprano voice, vibrato and all.”
The next Christmas young DeMain played the lead role in “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” also in his hometown of Youngstown, Ohio. He received a spinet piano as a Christmas present so he could take the lessons that
inevitably led him to a music degree from New York’s The Juilliard School, an apprenticeship with Leonard Bernstein, and, ultimately, a Grammy Award for his recording of Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” with the Houston
Grand Opera.
For DeMain, who this season is celebrating his 15th year as MSO’s maestro, everything begins and ends with Christmas. That may explain why the award-winning conductor and his family take such pains to celebrate
the holiday in grand style, both personally and professionally.
“We celebrated with my family when my mother and father were alive, usually going to Connecticut to visit my brother,” DeMain says. “Now we divide our celebration between Madison, where we like to decorate to the nines, and Houston, where we still have
some very dear friends from Germany.”

Musical homes
DeMain can call both cities home from a professional point of view, too. The musician had a distinguished 17-year tenure with the Houston Opera, earning not only a Grammy, but also a Tony Award and France’s Grand Prix
du Disc for his recording of “Porgy and Bess.” He also established himself as one of the Gershwin opera’s premier interpreters. To date he has conducted some 350 performances of “Porgy” at places like La Scala di

Milano, the Paris Opera, for Japan Arts in Tokyo and a New York City Opera production, televised as part of the Live from Lincoln Center series that earned an Emmy nomination for “Outstanding Classical Music and Dance Program.”
This time of year, however, neither of the Gershwins are preferred listening. Holiday music fills in his blustery days and cold winter nights.
“Whether Handel’s ‘Messiah’ is truly
Christmas music or not is debatable, but it tops my list,” DeMain says. “The great wealth of melody found in traditional carols is really unique to the season, and I love them all.”

An MSO Christmas
DeMain taps that wealth the first weekend of each December when he conducts MSO’s Holiday Spectacular, some of which is performed in his now ubiquitous Santa hat. Critics have described the annual performance as
the orchestra’s “Christmas card to the city” and “the official start of the holiday season.” DeMain sees it much the same way, and has worked over the past few years to diversify the program and performers to include a variety
of different cultural and ethnic variations
in homage to Madison’s changing demographic landscape.
“I think adding the Mount Zion Gospel
Choir a few years back was a major innovation to these concerts,” DeMain explains. “I’d like to add a stronger Hispanic component in the future.”
As in the past, this year’s Spectacular,
which opens Dec. 5, will not only feature the gospel choir, but also the Madison Symphony Chorus, Madison Youth Choirs and the Madison Area Concert Handbells. The musical
mix will be made up of selections both sacred and secular, ending with the annual Christmas carol audience sing-along (that’s where the Santa hat comes in).
“The secular music really hits at the sentimental, nostalgic side of Christmas,” the maestro says. “I like ‘The Christmas Song,’ ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas,’ ‘It’s Beginning to Look
a Lot Like Christmas,’ “Santa Claus is Coming to Town’ … the list goes on, doesn’t it?”

Holiday home
It certainly goes on in DeMain’s Madison home, decorated inside and out with a

growing number of snowmen collected by John, his wife Barbara and his daughter Jennifer.
In fact, the cold northern climate is part
of the holiday mystique for the family.
“Barbara is German and when we have
Christmas in Houston, it’s totally German,” DeMain says. “There are real candles on the Christmas tree, roast goose and red cabbage with dumplings for dinner. I want Jennifer to experience her German heritage as much as
possible, and Christmas in Houston with our German friends is very special.”
Shopping, cooking and freezing fingers
and toes while hanging outdoor holiday lights round out the season for the DeMains. But for at least one of them, it still begins and ends with the music.
“We always talk about hearing the angels sing, so if there is no music, then the angels would be silent,” DeMain says. “It is the enormous
body of music, both sacred and secular, that really defines the season.”
Despite social trends to the contrary, the season exists and thrives because of something keepers of faith say happened a little more than 2,000 years ago and changed the direction of the world.
“It’s difficult to shy away from the fact
that the holiday’s origins are Christian and have inspired so much music as a result,” DeMain says. “But the message of peace on Earth is for all of us. If we can promote this idea each year during this season, then we can help move the world just a little bit closer towards this goal.”

Michael Muckian is a Madison-area freelance writer.