(Above: Eugene Concert Choir singer Kami Hendrix during the complicated recording of choir’s holiday Video, Holidays Around the World; courtesy Eugene Concert Choir)
By Randi Bjornstad
It’s called Holidays Around the World, and that’s a perfect description. Given the way the people worldwide have been sequestered because of the coronavirus pandemic from the normal festivities that happen this time of year around the globe, the Eugene Concert Choir likewise had to cancel its own regular holiday concert, which would have been performed on Dec. 13.
The challenge became finding a way to celebrate the season nonetheless, and the result is a special online offering that can be seen and heard on the concert choir’s website at: EugeneConcertChoir.org
“When health professionals addressing the choral field cautioned that, for adequate social distancing, choirs would need to rehearse in a stadium, my first thought was, ‘Okay, which stadium?’ ” Diane Retallack, artistic director and conductor of the Eugene Concert Choir, said in announcing the online concert.
With the cooperation of Kidsports’ Bev Smith and AJ Gaulton, the solution became a combination of in-person sessions with limited numbers of choir members — observing widespread social distancing and wearing singers’ masks — rehearsing and recording at Eugene Civic Park and the new Kidsports Fieldhouse, with other singers rehearsing via Zoom.
And luckily, “although it wasn’t built with this purpose in mind, the Fieldhouse has beautiful acoustics,” Retallack said.
The result is 30 minutes of new recordings by the choir, augmented with another 30 minutes of performance drawn from videos made at past holiday performances, to create an hour-long concert.
Technically, the process to create this concert was complicated, as described by Retallack.
“You see a lot of ‘virtual choir’ performances on the internet — those are not ‘choirs,’ “ she said. “They are individuals alone in their solitary environments recording video of themselves and sending that in to an engineer to put it all together.”
In this case, voices were added small group by small group, which took 10 recording sessions to complete, Retallack said, working with Bill Barnett of Gung-Ho Studio and using the Hult Center for the Performing Arts, which essentially became “an enormous recording studio,” a complex process that is documented on the video.
The video concert reflects the fact that people around much of the globe celebrate holidays in December, reflected in music as diverse as vocals and instrumentals celebrating winter solstice, Christmas, Chanukah and other holidays, geographically dispersed throughout North America, Latin and South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Australia, and the Pacific.
The program finale offers a special message, “Let There Be Peace on Earth,” drawn from an archival video from a concert that included 180 singers from the Eugene Concert Choir, Eugene Gleemen, Women’s Choral Society, and the Dorians group from South Eugene High School.
Holidays Around the World
What: A one-hour video concert, a gift to the community (and the world) from the Eugene Concert Choir
Where: On YouTube, via the Eugene Concert Choir’s website at EugeneConcertChoir.org
Featured artists: Eugene Concert Choir; Eugene Vocal Arts; instrumental combo, with Paul Winter on soprano saxophone; local guest artists David Lomond, Fernell Lopez, Darline Jackson, Calvin Orlando Smith; the West African Cultural Arts Institute (WACAI); and the Halau Hula O Na Pua O Hawaii Nei
Cost: Free
