In Columbus, the Magpie Consort is a very happy group of singers who will be welcoming guests to their annual holiday program, "A Garland for Advent," on Saturday, Dec. 11, at St. John's Episcopal Church in Worthington and Sunday, Dec. 12, at St. Francis of Assisi Church in the Short North.

The Dec. 11 performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. at 700 High St. while on Dec. 12 it starts at 6 p.m. at 386 Buttles Ave. Admission is free, although the suggested donation is $10. A mulled wine reception will follow the St. John's Episcopal Church event. Funds raised in the second performance will go to the Mid-Ohio Foodbank. A Dec. 5 appearance at Trinity Episcopal Church in Newark benefited the Newark Coalition of Care.

Formed originally in the dining room of David and Karen Carpenter's Clintonville home in February 1998, the "Magpies," as they call themselves, come from a variety of central Ohio locales, including Hilliard, Worthington, Westerville, Old Town East, Galloway and Lewis Center, according to artistic director Sheena Phillips.

Now boasting 20 voices, the group's humble beginnings were with only five singers.

"It was not really intended to be quite as large as it is, just a little ensemble to do mostly renaissance music," David Carpenter recalled. "We were just amateurs, all of us."

The Magpie Consort (the third definition of the word is "a group of instrumentalists and singers who perform music, especially old music") still tackle songs that were popular in the 15th and 16th centuries, but the repertoire today embraces a wider range of musical styles.

The Dec. 11 and 12 performances are examples of that.

"In Magpie tradition, we draw our program from far and wide, and offer a feast of traditional, renaissance and contemporary music on Advent and holiday themes," artistic director Phillips wrote in announcing the appearances. "This year we are joined by professional string players, chamber organ and percussion, in a program that includes Monteverdi's "Beatus Vir" and Buxtehude's choral cantata "Jesu, Meines Lebens Leben," as well as delightful folk carols, early American hymns, and other seasonal songs, in fresh as well as time-honored arrangements."

David Carpenter, whose wife Karen Elizabeth died on July 14, had dropped out of the group the couple co-founded because he felt he was too old. However, with some new music that he's not had a chance to sing before, Carpenter said that he let himself be enticed back into the fold for the December performances.

"My wife was really quite an accomplished singer," he said. "She was a theater major at Northwestern and singer of sorts. Then she and I were in a church choir together. That's how we met. I have fiddled with vocal music over the years. I'm not really a trained singer; I'm just a faker."

Phillips, who also composes original pieces for the Magpie Consort, came to Columbus in January 2000 with husband Christopher H. Brew and their two children from Edinburgh, Scotland, after he landed a job as an assistant professor at Ohio State University.

"Sort of new century, new place," Sheena Phillips said.

Back in her native land, Phillips had been director of the Rudsambee choir and upon settling in Clintonville began looking around for a new choir to join or perhaps direct. She read in The Dispatch that the Magpie Consort was auditioning sopranos.

"Sopranos were just impossible to keep," Carpenter said. "It may have been something about me, but Sheena managed to survive me."

In fact, when Phillips "let slip" during her audition that her ambition was really to be director of a choir, the Magpies didn't hesitate to take her up on it.

"We said, 'Good, you're our director,' " Carpenter said.

She's been a good one, according to current singers, and has taken the group in many new directions.

"Sheena is the best director I've ever worked with, such a pleasure, and very talented," said Dawn Leach of Clintonville.

"We are so lucky to have Sheena Phillips," Hilliard resident Angela Kuder Hulligan said. "I don't know if people appreciate everything she is and does. She's just wonderful at picking out these compositions. As a composer herself, she can hear inside her head what these compositions would sound like.

"She just has a way of getting you to improve your game without insulting you. She just has the nicest way of saying just the right thing to you to get you to correct whatever it is you need to correct."

The Magpie Consort grew to include eight singers, then 12 and then 16, after Phillips came on board.

"Now it's 20 and it's not going to get any bigger than that," Phillips said. "At the moment we have 10 men and 10 women; it's really quite well balanced."

The artistic director said that her goal has been to include a wide variety of music.

"It's like having a large palette if you're a painter: a lot of different colors and textures," she said. I like to include music from different countries as well as different kinds. I try to include some really juicy items for people who really know about choral music but also music that's really delightful and accessible for other people.

"I think everyone will find something that they like."

Phillips knows that her singers like what they're doing.

"A lot of people in our audience comment on how happy our group looks to be singing, which I think is quite important," Phillips said. "I think there's a joy in any group where you are making something or doing something in common, but I think singing appeals to people's wish for harmony, not just in music but between people. It just is a good thing when our senses are pleased and we're happy that it all comes together."

"I love being a Magpie," said Leach, a member for three or four years. "It is the best: the best experience, the best choir I've ever been in. It's the most fun."

"It's very invigorating and satisfying," Hulligan said. "Any time when you feel like you've communicated the meaning and the feeling of a piece, particularly Christmas music ... being able to express some of the wonder and warmth and special feelings you get at Christmas that you don't really seem to get at any other time of the year, it's really kind of a flow of love or karma or whatever you want to call it."

"The experience itself is hard to describe," Carpenter said. "It's a combination of things. For one thing, it's very physical. There is a sense of physical elation that develops, sort of like a runner's high I think that there's a singer's high. You become addicted to that, just looking for that experience.

"The other thing for me ... is that to some degree you get to experience something that people in your past experienced. You get to relive history, and that is really neat."