The 2024–25 season of Worship & Arts at Brick Presbyterian Church continues with a service of Nine Lessons and Carols, featuring the U.S. premiere of Margaretha Christina de Jong’s “In the Bleak Midwinter.”

The choir will lead communal Christmas carols and Scripture readings by candlelight. This year’s repertoire includes carols by William Mathias, Elizabeth Poston, Cecilia McDowall, Sally Beamish, David Willcocks, Robert Lucas Pearsall, and John Rutter, as well as Margaretha Christina de Jong’s new work.

“In the Bleak Midwinter” is a mixed choir piece performed a cappella. Cappella Breda, conducted by Elisabeth Blom gave the world premiere of the piece in Dordrecht, Netherlands, in 2023. The composer says of this work, “The composition is based on one of the best-loved Christmas poems, ‘In The Bleak Midwinter,’ by Christina Rossetti (1830-1894). I tried to express this poem in music, with the corresponding moods that the text evoked in me and inspired me. The sopranos start with the main theme in the first stanza, followed by the whole choir in the 2nd one. This is followed by a development in melody, harmony and metre. In the last strophe, part of the main theme returns, which is fugal in structure. The composition, written in minor, ends very intimately in major.”

The Lessons and Carols concert is scheduled for Dec. 22 at 4 p.m., at The Brick Presbyterian Church in Manhattan.