A long pause with heart racing right before the music begins. A singular breath taken by the whole Chorale followed by a perfectly pitched first note. The silence is broken for good.
After an elongated pause from performing as a group together, the Chorale’s season of concerts kicked off, allowing the group to be making music and worshiping together once more.
The Chorale refused to allow a time of hardship for many to keep them from coming together to perform once more. All the members were eager to be performing together again for the community.
“I’m just super excited to be having a concert,” said junior Hanna Lichacz. “Chorale could have not existed this semester (with) all things considered, so I’m glad there is a concert.”
To meet their preset guidelines for performance, the group made adaptations to keep the performers and audience safe. This concert looked different based on those guidelines, leading to the performance being completely outdoors, the group being spaced apart from one another and being spaced from the audience and leading to a change in location to accommodate a good amount of people with plentiful room to social distance.
Going into the concert, the group faced some roadblocks. One of the greatest of these roadblocks included battle audio troubles.
“When you’re in a recital hall, it’s said to be acoustically perfect,” said sophomore Franklin Snyder. “When you’re outside, you have what is called a dead space.”
Because of this principle, the group utilized some speakers and an audio technician to mitigate these problems.
Even with all of these new principles, they managed to perform, while collaborating with the Indiana Wesleyan University Chorale, for their first live audience since last spring. This performance took place at Matter Park in Marion on Sept. 23. The location of this performance was new for many members since many had never performed at a park before.
While the two schools’ chorale programs performed at the same venue, both groups had their own music sets. They brought their own repertoires, but they worked together, through the communication between the two program directors, to bring music alive for this community.
Taylor Chorale’s repertoire encompassed some old with the new. Including music from their canceled Civil Rights Tour from last spring and new music, the group’s repertoire had a wide range of variety.
“So, it’s a mix of both,” Lichacz said. “Our spring break civil rights tour got cancelled last year because of COVID, so Dr. Spencer brought back a lot of old songs that we will be singing this semester, and a few of them are in the repertoire for this upcoming concert, and then some of them are new.”
This music was hand selected to craft a unique message for the audience. Selecting a variety of music allowed for many messages of hope to shine from their performance. The group’s music gave the audience songs that they can reflect on after leaving the performance.
“Our music has some great messages this semester,” Snyder said. “The first would be that God is still in control. He has not fallen off His throne, if you will, and He is not surprised by what is happening. He will walk with us through the darkest valley in peace with Jesus as our leader.”
Overall, their performance was filled with joy and peace. The Chorale gathered together and collaborated with Indiana Wesleyan University’s Chorale Program. Engaging a new community of people, bringing music to these individuals and reminding them of the reasons to worship, even in these times of struggles.
“I hope the audience will be able to take away the fact that we are still able to worship and sing praise to God with excellence, even with all the restrictions and adjustments we’ve had to make this year,” Snyder said.
The Chorale plans to hold many more concerts this semester. The next one that the group will perform in, ‘I’ve Got a Sound,’ will be held Oct. 6 as a collaboration with the Black Student Union.
