Submitted by David Warder
I am writing this on the last day of September, during a warm and sunny stretch of weather. It’s hard to think about cleaning up the garden in this weather, let alone… Christmas??!!!!… but Christmas IS going to come and it’s time for the Community Christmas Cantata Choir to start rehearsing.
Besides the lovely weather, the state of our world can also make it hard to think about Christmas. Reading or listening to the news can get pretty discouraging. I try to imagine what the world was like on the first Christmas Day. I’m not sure if we’ve made a lot of progress, but I do think it is well worth hearing the story each year and reminding ourselves of those first expectations. We may be quite familiar with “how” the story unfolded, but gloss over “why” the story unfolded. Maybe we think a 2,000 year-old story isn’t particularly relevant today. What if it is?
That kind of sums up why I’m involved with the Christmas Cantata Choir. Why does the story matter?
If you’d like to join a choir and get a head start on singing Christmas music, it does mean giving up your Sunday afternoon nap for a few weeks, but it’s an awful lot of fun.
The choir sings mostly in 4-part harmony (soprano, alto, tenor or bass). Experience singing this style of music and an ability to read music are huge assets because our rehearsal schedule is pretty short and we need to cover a lot of music each week. For this particular Cantata, a good sense of rhythm is going to be valuable too!
Rehearsals begin on Sunday, October 19 at 2:00 pm at the Bethel Evangelical Missionary Church, 18 Ferndale Road in Lion’s Head. The choir will perform at the same church on Tuesday, December 16 and Wednesday, December 17.
This is not just for people in Lion’s Head. At present, our choir includes people who live anywhere between Tobermory and Clavering. We just happen to rehearse in Lion’s Head.
If this sounds like it might be for you, please let me know, or just show up on October 19.
If you don’t sing or can’t commit to the rehearsal schedule, but you would like to be a part in another way, please let me know (David Warder 519-793-4015). There are lots of other ways people can help out without being on the platform.
