Making a list and checking it twice for Virginia Consort holiday show

Amateur and professional performers alike know that when it’s time to turn a mass of chaotic creative energy into a cohesive concert, there’s nothing like a touch of Christmas magic.

Saturday’s “Christmas with the Consort” will start with a procession of 38 Virginia Consort chamber chorus members and 65 singers in the Virginia Consort Youth Chorale in First Presbyterian Church. Add about a dozen compositions from around the world, throw in some brass and tympani players and then multiply everything by two performances, and the details to keep track of just start ballooning.

But once the candles are lit, everything shimmers.

“It’s a zoo until it all gets put together, and then it just unfolds,” said Judith Gary, conductor of the Virginia Consort.

The consort will be presenting familiar carol melodies with new twists, singing a Nigerian work in the Igbo language, slipping in some gems from lesser-known composers and giving a bit of favorite holiday ballet music a fresh update.

Gary starts the process of selecting music for “Christmas with the Consort” in July to find appealing challenges for the adult chorus and both children’s groups.

“The Christmas program is the most varied of all, because we don’t have a central major work,” Gary said.

Contemporary composers have created new takes on traditional works, including Stephen Chatman’s arrangement of “Angels We have Heard on High” and a “Sussex Carol” version by Bob Chilcott of King’s Singers fame.

The singers also will present the “Russian Dance” from Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite” in a fast-paced vocal arrangement that clocks in at 54 seconds.

Twentieth-century composer Hugo Distler turned a popular German carol into a motet, and his “Singet Frisch und Wohlgemut” hints at what else he might have accomplished had he lived past the age of 34.

“He wrote some exquisite music that gets right to the heart of the season,” Gary said.

“Amuworo Ayi Out Nwa,’’ by contemporary Nigerian composer Christian Onyeji, “has been an adventure,” Gary said.

Pergolesi’s “Glory to God in the Highest” and Joaquin Nin-Culmell’s “El Nino Perdido” also are in the mix.

And in a humorous ode to holiday excess, P.D.Q. Bach’s “Throw the Yule Log On, Uncle John” — as Gary puts it, a case of “a ne’er-do-well writing about a ne’er-do-well’’ — reminds listeners why it’s not a bright idea to get too merry before the hungry guests arrive. P.D.Q. Bach is the comic alter ego of composer Peter Schickele.

Tickets — $20, $10 for students — can be picked up ahead of time at Greenberry’s in Barracks Road Shopping Center, both locations of Market Street Wine Shop and New Dominion Bookshop on the Downtown Mall, and any remaining tickets can be bought at the door.