When the clock strikes twelve and another year has gone,
I give a kiss to you
As remembrance of the past we have shared and the future yet to come.
We toast the days, both good and bad,
the old friends and the new.
When the clock strikes twelve and another year has gone,
I give a kiss to you.
While the night is long and the bitter cold has come,
we lengthen our embrace
To sustain us as we mourn our regrets and the fear of days unknown.
We toast the days…
As we stand on the edge of another bright new year,
I take your hand in mine
With assurance of the courage we will find
and the hope that leads us on.
We toast the days…
Read Inspired Choir’s Colleen McNickle’s feature of We Toast the Days including teacher resources and discussion guides here.
Each half of the concert ended with something that shone a lovely spotlight on the group’s harmonic artistry. First came the piece that inspired a group of St. Olaf College students to form Cantus in the first place, Franz Biebl’s “Ave Maria.” If that represented the past, then a bright future could be glimpsed in the program-closing “We Toast the Days” by Twin Cities composer Linda Kachelmeier, who may have created a 21st-century “Auld Lang Syne,” a beautiful ballad that deserves to become a standard of the season.
Rob Hubbard, December 2024 Star Tribune
