On Saturday, Dec. 5, the South Holland Master Chorale will not be performing its annual Christmas concert, but that doesn’t mean its voices will be silent.
The group will release a video on Saturday of its 2019 Christmas concert. The concert will be available about 8 a.m. Saturday at tinyurl.com/southhollandmc.
Director Albert Jackson said the concert has been a tradition for two decades, and it has loyal fans throughout the South Suburbs and Northwest Indiana. The video version this year is intended to fill the gap left by the absence of the concert due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We have regularly performed to standing-room-only audiences,” he said, including at St. Joseph Church in Homewood. “We feel an obligation to continue to provide this service to the many people who have come to count on us to kick off their holiday celebrations.”
The music will include a range of traditional and original works.
“Our program includes very well-known Christmas hymns and carols, wonderful arrangements of Christmas songs, a children’s choir, a terrific string quartet comprised of four young sisters and a Christmas cantata from long, long ago,” Jackson said. “One particularly poignant piece was written by one of our former chorale members and arranged by a friend of the chorale who has since passed away from the COVID virus.”
The Master Chorale members, which include a number from Homewood and Flossmoor, have managed to stay connected in spite of the limitations imposed by the pandemic, according to Jackson.
Singing indoors has been cited by health experts as a high risk activity, because the virus that causes COVID-19 is primarily spread through the air by exhaled droplets. Choir rehearsals and performances have been identified as sources of infection outbreaks.
“We keep in contact with the singers and our audience through email, Facebook and the like, and even have an old-fashioned phone tree which enables our board members to make personal contact with the singers,” he said.
Although the group has posted a few performances online, this is the first time it decided to create an online event.
“As with so many other things, the pandemic has altered the landscape for performances of every type,” Jackson said. “Although there are a couple of YouTube links on our website, we had never thought of the potential necessity of using technology in this fashion before, as a replacement of a performance instead of just a supplement.”