From Vivaldi’s “Gloria” to selections from “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” director Stephanie Hawkins said the Rainy River Community Choir’s sixth-annual Christmas concert will have something for everybody.
The choir kicks off the first of its four performances tomorrow at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Bergland. Then it visits St. Mary’s Church in Fort Frances on Friday (Dec. 3), Our Lady of the Way Church in Pinewood next Saturday (Dec. 11), and Our Lady of Good Counsel in Rainy River next Sunday (Dec. 12).
All concerts take place at 7:30 p.m., with admission being $6.
“We have a variety of different styles of Christmas music,” Hawkins said. “We’ll be doing everything from classical Christmas music to John Denver and the Muppets.
“One of the things I’m just going to keep as a surprise,” she added. “We’ll be opening the concert different than how we used to.”
The choir will perform about a dozen different pieces, Hawkins noted, with “timeless readings about Christmas” interspersed between the music.
For its performance at St. Mary’s Church here, the choir will be joined by the Borderland Community Orchestra, which will do a few selections as a prelude.
“We’re actually going to be singing a few carols with the orchestra, and the audience will be invited to sing along,” Hawkins said. “Then it will be just the choir after that.”
Meanwhile, Hawkins said she was quite pleased with the turnout for this year’s choir, saying it attracted a few new people as well as many returning members.
“We, unfortunately, had to lose two of our basses due to work commitments but we have a larger tenor section this year,” she remarked.
Although it started out small, the Rainy River Community Choir has done well to establish itself in the last six years. Just a few weeks ago, it sang in “Choral Fest ’99,” a non-competitive choir festival in Winnipeg.
Hawkins also noted tentative plans have been made to do the complete Vivaldi’s “Gloria” next Christmas with the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra.
“We’ll probably start [practising] toward the end of January,” she said. “Most of the people want to work to Easter, then take a break, come back after summer, and add some more songs to it.”
Although one might think it would be difficult to keep things fresh after six years of doing Christmas concerts, Hawkins said she hasn’t had a problem so far coming up with something different every year.
“There’s such a wide array of Christmas music out there that once you go through the variety, it’s easy to come up with different styles,” she reasoned.
“Really, the challenge is to go through all the different resources out there,” she explained.
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