Winter Solstice Celebration 2025

Sunday, December 21, 2025

St. Luke’s Episcopal Church

939 Hinman Ave Evanston, IL 60202

6:30pm Gathering / 7:00pm Performance

The EcoVoice Project rounds out its 2025 season with a celebration of the winter solstice. Our celebration will be centered around winter solstice traditions around the globe, across space and time. With candlelight, wassail, and solstice crafts, this collaboration with Climate Action Evanston, Interfaith Action of Evanston (Climate Change and Justice Working Group), Evanston Public Library (Blueberry Awards), The Musical Offering, 350 Chicago, and St. Luke’s Episcopal Church will include music, stories, and reflections on our connection with nature.

This year we are excited to premiere two new EcoVoice Community Songs, composed by Leah Shoshanah and Kaitlin Foley, who will also lead guest ensemble, the Evanston Folk Choir. In addition to community singing, musical offerings will include flutist Emma Hospelhorn, pianist Rick Ferguson, and vocalist Kirsten Hedegaard, who will perform peaceful winter interludes, and Indigenous storyteller Vincent Romero will share winter solstice stories. 

Concert Program

Welcome

 

Schedule

6:30 PM Tabling and Crafts

7:00 Performance

8:15 PM Tabling, Crafts, and Wassail

Musicians

Kirsten Hedegaard, voice

Emma Hospelhorn, flute

Katie Foley

Leah Shoshanah

Rick Ferguson

Vincent

Tony Garrett

Collaborators

The EcoVoice Project

Climate Action Evanston

Evanston Public Library (Blueberry Award)

Interfaith Action Evanston (Climate Change Justice Working Group)

St. Luke’s Evanston

350 Evanston

The Musical Offering

Evanston Ecology Center

Check out our climate action items for the holiday season:

Solstice Climate Action Items

Meet our collaborating organizations!

Our musical guests!

Emma Hospelhorn

  • Praised by the Chicago Classical Review for her “standout” and “joyful” playing, Emma Hospelhorn is a flutist whose creative practices resist easy categorization. As a member of Ensemble Dal Niente, she has recorded works by composers including George Lewis, Hilda Paredes, Erin Gee, Jeff Parker, Igor Santos, Anthony Cheung, and many more. She is one half of The Machine Is Neither…, an electroacoustic duo centered around motion-catpure technology, which has created works including Terra Lingua (2019/2020) for dancers in motion-capture suits and live instruments, and Tree of Secrets (2018) for audience and listening lamp. She performs with a wide variety of improvising ensembles, folk, and pop groups, and additional collaborations include a working duo for instruments and homemade circuits with cellist Katinka Kleijn, as well as stints with Manual Cinema, the Neo-Futurists, Lookingglass Theatre, and Silk Road Rising. She also writes and performs experimental folk music as Em Spel.

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with Winter Solstice stories shared by

WFMT Host LaRob K. Rafael

As an Arts Administrator, LaRob K. Rafael has worked with Lyric Opera of Chicago in the Learning and Creative Engagement Department, sits on the Board of La Caccina, an all-women’s profession choral ensemble, as Diversity and Community Engagement Advisor, been the Director of Community Engagement with Chicago’s Ear Taxi Festival (2021), and is an active consultant with the recently formed Black Opera Alliance and Black Administrators of Opera groups. LaRob was recently selected as one of 11 arts administrators nationwide to join the 4th Cohort of Sphinx LEAD, a 2-year program designed to evolve the industry landscape by empowering the next generation of executive leaders.

LaRob also uses his voice to connect people from different communities as a newly appointed weekend morning host of Chicago's Classical music station, WFMT (98.7 FM) to continue decentralizing the predominantly white, European, male-centered classical consciousness.