Overview
The Cary Community Choir Board came to the difficult realization over the summer of 2020 that the Covid-19 Pandemic was most probably not going to subside enough to make it safe enough for singers and audience members to enjoy what has become a long standing tradition in Cary of presenting the Christmas portion of Handel’s Messiah in one of the Cary churches. This was particularly disappointing given the success of the 2019 performance, when over 160 singers and musicians shared their talents with a capacity crowd.
Unbowed, the Board decided to honor the Cary Community Choir tradition by commissioning a virtual choir performance of two selections, And the Glory of the Lord and the Hallelujah Chorus. Many singers and musicians have contributed to this project, some working well outside their comfort zones to complete this effort.
How this was accomplished
Defining the Project
- The Board and Director selected the pieces and secured the services of EasyChoirMusic of Austin, Texas to render the professional services required to complete the Virtual Choir video
- The Board established a schedule consistent with the delivery of the video in mid November, 2020.
Project Execution
- Recruitment efforts were undertaken via direct email contacts and exposure in Social Media to collect singers. We had good response from our established singer base as well as a significant group of singers new to the Cary Community Choir to support this activity.
- The CCC website was updated to supply information about Virtual Choirs as well as on-line support for signing up.
- Backing Tracks were created and made available on the CCC website, as well as detailed instructions on the recording and submission of the individual recordings.
- Two Zoom based rehearsals were held to answer questions and build momentum. These were fun and well attended, with dozens of singers.
- During the three week recording window, well over 70 singers and musicians supplied
- 154 Video recordings
- 10 Audio recordings
- These recordings, nearly 60G of data, were vetted. This was the first time many of the singers have tried something like this and the overall results were very good. The videos were transferred to our vendor, EasyChoirMusic. They did the following:
- Built up the instrumental background by taking the musician audio, synchronizing and layering it for a full, rich sound.
- The video technicians artistically faded in and faded out groups of performers, synchronizing and reinforcing their voices to match.
- The finished videos were incorporated into a larger, single video to honor our singers and sponsors, reviewed by the CCC board and released.