Arizona Repertory Singers, Tucson Girls Chorus and Tucson Masterwork Chorale aren’t letting a worldwide pandemic take the holly jolly out of their holiday traditions.
The choirs this week will go live with virtual versions of their annual holiday concerts, events that early this year, as COVID-19 took hold and changed the world in ways we couldn’t have imagined, seemed beyond impossible.
The choirs in almost all instances had members record their parts individually from their homes and then the videos were edited together into a seamless performance.
Arizona Repertory Singers “Home For the Holidays”
When: Premieres Friday, Dec. 11, and will be available through Dec. 31.
Tickets: $20 a household through arsingers.org, which will send ticket-buyers a link to the online site to watch the concert.
Thirty members of Arizona Repertory Singers have been working on the choir’s holiday concert throughout the fall.
Music Director Ryan Phillips began editing the individual parts as he got them, starting in October. The editing process took more than 175 hours to edit the audio and video from vocalists performing seven songs. That’s not including the hours he spent editing the concert’s finale, Eric William Barnum’s “Sweeter Still: A Holiday Carol,” which was performed by a choir of 50 that Phillips assembled by recruiting Repertory members and their friends and colleagues from around the country. One of vocalists was from Germany, he said.
“Now is the time to do something like that,” he said. “It’s a nice way that the Arizona Repertory Singers can reach out.”
The program for “Home For the Holidays” includes Benjamin Britten’s “Wolcum Yole” from his “Ceremony of Carols;” African-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s “Summer is Gone”; and Shawn Kirchner’s bluegrass inspired take on “Brightest and Best” featuring violin, cello and piano accompaniment.
In addition to conducting, Phillips will perform a guitar rendition of “Carol of the Bells” while pianist Trissina Kear also will play “Silent Night.”
Phillips, who led the choir and edited five virtual performances since June, said he hopes to get the choir together virtually for a spring concert in April.
Tucson Girls Chorus “Sounds of Winter”
When: 3:30 p.m. Dec. 20.
Tickets: Suggested donation of $15 to $20 per person through tucsongirlschorus.org.
Before the state and Tucson area’s COVID-19 numbers spiked recently, the Girls Chorus planned to take its annual holiday concert to the drive-in, performing holiday fan favorites. But with the pandemic raging, the chorus decided to go virtual.
The Girls Chorus, which went virtual in August and started working in person every other week soon after with girls who felt comfortable to do so, started recording individual performances in September and October. Participants from the chorus’s eight choirs were part of the winter concert.
Girls Chorus Director Marcela Molina recruited TGC alums from all over the world to team up with the Advanced Choir comprised of high schoolers to carry on the chorus’s tradition of singing “Silent Night.”
“It is beautiful to listen to and watch,” Molina said.
The “Sounds of Winter” program includes Alan Billingsley’s “Can’t Stop the Music,” Mac Huff’s arrangement of “You’ve Got A Friend in Me,” “Thank You For Being A Friend” arranged by Greg Gilpin, Andrea Ramsey’s “I Lift My Voice,” Amy Bernon’s “Beautiful December,” Frank La Rocca’s “O Eve!” and the Hanukkah folk song “Banu Choshech Legaresh,”arranged by David Eddleman.
The concert ends on a joyous high note with all the choirs joining voices on Pinkzebra’s “The Defining Moment.”
Tucson MasterWorks Chorale, “We Rise Again”
When: Online through Monday, Dec. 14.
Tickets: $18 per household through tucsonmasterworkschorale.org.
“We Rise Again” is not technically a holiday concert, but Tucson MasterWorks Chorale is celebrating the gift of persevering in the face of incredible odds.
The program is filled with inspiring songs that testify to the human spirit including Andrea Ramsey’s “Yours Are The Hands,” Joan Szymko’s “It Takes A Village,” Mack Wilberg’s arrangement of “Homeward Bound,” Craig Hella Johnson’s arrangement of “I Love You/What A Wonderful World” and the centerpiece, Stephen Smith’s arrangement of Leon Dubinsky’s moving “We Rise Again.”
