How has Choral Chameleon bit hit by COVID-19 to date?
Ensemble The Ensemble’s ‘If I Left the Zoo’ remaining Tour dates in March at the Jesuit Center for Spiritual Growth in Wernersville, Pennsylvania, and in April at Middlebury College in Vermont had to be canceled. After yet another fantastic reception by the Unitarian Church in Westport, Connecticut in February, we were excited to be bringing Choral Chameleon to these two States for the very first time and to be welcomed by our hosts’ communities who are great supporters of choral music. We appreciate that the Jesuit Center for Spiritual Growth had already invested a significant amount in marketing our events at the point of cancellation, which they were not able to recoup and yet they were still able and willing to honor their contractual obligations towards our singers. They have been exemplary supporters of the arts over the years and we definitely want to acknowledge that. Chorus In the case of the Chorus, when the virus hit, we were about to begin a fundraising campaign and promotion for our second big project of the year ‘Bigger Than My Song’, which was slated for May 2nd and 3rd. For this project, we had commissioned and rehearsed an unprecedented number of new song arrangements for a single program – eleven to be exact. The event being planned for May, which is now also canceled, was an installation-style pre-recorded presentation in which the audience could freely move between purist renderings of the song arrangements - with choir only - to another space where EDM, House, and Trance beat remixes of these arrangements would be simultaneously presented in another room by our DJ collaborator, the amazing Brandon Wolcott. Read an extensive description of the project HERE So what’s next? Even though these live events for May had to be canceled, recording was a central part of the project and we hope to capture the choir singing these arrangements as soon as we can safely resume in-person activity, and to use this hiatus time to let our DJ produce the tracks he will mix our music with. This route will allow us, at the very least, to bring the innovation at the heart of the project into the world and allow access to hearing these great new arrangements and their groundbreaking remixes. We are not ruling out trying to bring the live experience to life at some point next Season. Resources Thanks in no small part to the support of our donors and Board, we are happy and proud to report that we will be able to honor our payments to the commissioned arrangers and to our staff musicians for all rehearsal time to date, as well as our obligations to other contractors whose services we have engaged so far this Season. We are now re-budgeting for the project to reflect the new plan. |
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