I’m also a member of two choirs, the Redeemer Lutheran Church Choir in Bangor, Maine, and the UMaine Oratorio Society, a town/gown group at UMaine in Orono. We both were shut down in March, no rehearsals, no performances. I had just joined the Chorale in Sept. '19 as a bass/baritone and we gave two great performances in November and had started rehearsals in January for our annual performance with the Bangor Symphony on the UMaine campus when the rehearsals and performances were shut down. The 2020 performance was to have been Haydn’s Mass in the Time of War and the 2021 performance was to have been Beethoven’s 9th. Neither did or will happen. In lieu of rehearsals, our chorale director, a U. Maine Professor of Music, taught a course via Zoom on the history of choral music in the fall at the Monday night rehearsal time slot and he’ll teach another course starting shortly. Peter, as a Lutheran you’ll appreciate my partial remedy for the drought in singing. I sing along, muted, with the hymns provided at our church services on Zoom but I supplement afterward with playing and singing “My Life Flows on in Endless Song — How Can I Keep from Singing” (ELW 763).
In Response to: When Song is Silenced