- Hello, I'm Beth Macmillan and welcome to "Arteffects."

It's the holiday season, and the Reno Philharmonic really knows how to get everyone into the spirit with their annual concert "Spirit of the Season."

But this concert is more than just an orchestral performance, it involves a lead singer, a chorus, a handbell ensemble, a line of tap dancers, and more.

Let's learn about this extravagant performance and get into the Spirit of the Season.

(festive orchestra music) ♪ Its the spirit of the season.

♪ - Spirit of the Season is our annual holiday kickoff.

- It's an opportunity for our community members to kick off the celebration of the Christmas season.

- [Jason] Where we do all of your holiday favorites with the Reno Phil Chorus and also some local talent.

- [Jennie] We've had dogs, jugglers, hula hoopers, all sorts of community musicians performing, and just a big celebration of the Christmas season.

- It's a really big production, and it's really gratifying that Reno has really allowed me to usher in the Christmas season and kinda be their ambassador for the holidays.

(dramatic orchestra music) (audience applauding and cheering) Reinventing the program every year is pretty tricky.

There really are a lot of moving parts.

We do plan it very carefully so the pace of the show doesn't have any dead time.

We wanna just have go, go, go, and have a real brisk pace.

- It's fun to be a part of Spirit of the Season, but it's a lot of hours of work Then concert week, we're there Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday nights, rehearsing with the orchestra.

And it's a big commitment of time, but I think all of them would say the performance is worth it.

- Working with professional musicians, it's a lot of fun, 'cause they can do everything, they can do every style.

And the Reno Phil, it's a pretty good band.

(Jason laughing).

(gentle festive music) Welcome back to Reno, Whitney Claire Kaufman.

I think long and hard about every program that I do every year.

I want something I know that I would enjoy conducting, but that I also think that the orchestra would enjoy performing as well as the singers.

♪ The best Christmas ♪ The best Christmas of all (upbeat festive music) (audience cheering and applauding) - The process of picking our pieces that the chorus is gonna collaborate with the orchestra on is similar, yet, different every year.

There's often a theme to Spirit of the Season.

This year, it's "Music at the Movies."

And Jason and I, at first, were like, okay, choruses in movies go like, (Jennie imitating opera singing) and that's not very interesting for the chorus to do.

And then we broadened that out a little bit.

One of the pieces that the chorus is highlighted on is "Thankful" by Josh Groban, and it really is touching about what we all have to be thankful for.

♪ Even with our differences ♪ There is a place we're all connected ♪ ♪ Each of us can find each others light ♪ ♪ Each of us can find each others light ♪ - And now for something completely different.

(audience laughing) Now, these talented musicians, you know, they're with us every Spirit of the Season.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, under the direction of Barb Walsh, "Tintabulations."

(audience applauding) (gentle handbell music) - Tintabulations Handbell Ensemble is a group of people who play English handbells.

Handbells are individually pitched, so one note is one handbell.

So if you imagine an entire piano keyboard, and you take all the keys off and you spread them out, that's what all the bells are.

(gentle handbell music) For this year's Spirit of the Season, Tintab is gonna play a solo, "Mary Did You Know," and then we'll be playing with a Philharmonic, "Gloria Hodie."

(gentle handbell music) (dancers tapping rhythmically) (audience cheering) - We have our own little kick line, Kia Crader and Fascinating Rhythm.

Every year she auditions high kicking dancers.

- We called ourselves Santa's Tappers, which were representing the Rockettes.

("Santa Baby") (dancers tapping rhythmically) The biggest challenge that we initially had was we had some fast tap dancers one year, you know, we set the choreography to the kicks at the end because it's very aerobic, lots of kicks, you have to kick high, and so it has to be set, the tempo for the kicks.

And one year, and this is the thing with working with live orchestra, some of the dancers were just a little ahead of the beat.

And so then Jason was like, oh, we must be lagging, so he started going faster.

And I was sitting in the sound booth and I was going, oh my goodness, they're going faster.

When you have canned music, the beat's not gonna change.

But when you have live music and the dancers are are little ahead of it, then that's a huge challenge.

("Santa Claus Is Coming Town") Performing with a a live orchestra is such a rare opportunity, and to be able to provide that to dancers is really a unique experience, and I'm really happy that I can be a part of that.

And there's such a give and take of energy because the orchestra is giving you energy, you know, you're giving energy and it's, really, a collaborative feeling on stage of everybody representing the performing arts in some form or fashion.

And then the audience is giving you feedback.

It's an extraordinary experience.

("Santa Claus Is Coming Town") (audience cheering) - Oh my gosh, the audience reaction at Spirit of the Season is just fantastic.

As you look out into the audience and hear these kids all dressed up, and families dressed up and excited to start the Christmas season.

♪ A white Christmas - The audience is probably the most wonderful part, but they're super responsive.

They seem to really enjoy it and it's, I mean, and there's, I don't know how many, 1000, more than that.

So, you know, that's kind of an adrenaline rush.

- We're thrilled that the audience is thrilled when we come out.

When we first started, we didn't think we'd be doing it very often, and so we were really surprised.

We appreciate the audience and their reaction to us because we have become a part of their tradition as well.

- And I tell the chorus every year, I know that we sing the the title piece, "Spirit of the Season," every year, but somebody's never heard it before.

And for some people that is just the official start of Christmas for them.

Coming to hear the Spirit of the Season concert is like, ah, it's Christmas.

♪ And may all your Christmases be white ♪ ("White Christmas") (audience cheering) - [Performers] Merry Christmas.

- Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, happy holidays, everybody.

- [Narrator] Funding for "Arteffects" is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors.

Meg and Dillard Myers.

In memory of Sue McDowell.

The Carol Franc Buck Foundation.

Chris and Parky May.

And by the annual contributions of PBS Reno members.

(mellow synth music) (upbeat groove music)