After work yesterday, I walked across Fulton Street to St. Paul's Chapel for a holiday concert by the Trinity Youth Chorus: a choir program for boys and girls between 5 and 18 led by Robert P. Ridgell. The centerpiece of the program (for which they were joined by members of the Trinity Choir) was Benjamin Britten's Ceremony of Carols: a sequence of 12 carols in old and middle English traditionally sung by a boys' choir (such as it is each year at St. Thomas Church in midtown.) But this performance was less about technical perfection than giving these kids the opportunity to sing in front of their parents and friends, in one of New York's most historic spaces. 

They finished with a new carol composed for them called "The Future of the World Is Inside Me." Looking around at the banners and photos of 9/11 victims - vestiges of when St. Paul's was a volunteer station for rescue workers at the World Trade Center site directly across Church St. - it occurred to me that most of these kids hadn't even born yet in 2001. To them, this was just another concert, another Christmas. Has there ever been a greater testament to the power of renewal. (More pics below.)