Hearts of Harmony continues to rehearse virtually, but alas, we still can’t perform or sing together in person.  Early in the fall we decided to do a virtual choir performance.  We recorded the latest song we had learned, had it put into a video format and posted it on face book.  WOW!!!  No, it wasn’t an in-person performance but we loved the result and it felt almost like we were singing together when we listened to the video.  It gave our members the feeling that yes, we are still singing and yes, we can share what we love with others.  

Prior to Christmas, we were really missing being able to perform and visit with many seniors in Central Alberta.  We typically sing out at a number of senior’s residences throughout the area during December.  We wanted to find a way to reach out to the many folks who are unable to visit with friends and families while we all stay at home and keep our cohorts small.  

So . . . we put together a short video of the chorus singing three winter songs.  We circulated the link for this performance to the places we usually visit during the Christmas season - Lodges, Senior Residences and Long Term Care Facilities.  That was just the start.  It snowballed from there.

One of our members who works in health care had a regional contact who circulated the link to our performance to all the Long Term Cares in our Health Region.  Our video was played at lots of their Christmas celebrations throughout out Central Alberta.

Many of our smaller communities have community connection groups that meet virtually.  We shared the video with these groups and it was shared at many of their ‘coffee’ groups in December.  

Members sent the link to friends and family as a Holiday greeting.  The link went to family and friends far and wide.  We have received likes from all over Canada, some from Europe and some from as far away as Australia.

Members shared a lot of great experiences related to sharing this video.  One long time member whose son has always been 'too cool' to come to his mom’s performances actually listened to the video and was impressed by the quality of singing. Another member shared how her 8 year old granddaughter couldn’t stop talking about the video and how her teacher showed it during music class.   

We sing at our regional hospital on a regular basis.  Their volunteer coordinator sent a link to the video to all their volunteers as a way of spreading Holiday cheer. 

Making a video is a lot of work, but as a chorus we feel it is very much worth the effort.  In our chorus it starts with our director making a high quality click tape for us and then the members work hard to learn and record the songs.  We have our section leaders do a quality check of all the videos prior to collecting them for the video.  For this project, we had over 100 videos that were put together to make the final product.  This is a lot of work and takes some technical know how so we were very pleased to use Photonglow photography  https://www.photonglow.photography/ to help us with this.  We have been very pleased with the quality of the work he has done for us. 

Stay tuned.  I am sure there is another video in our future.  

The link to our video is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co3SrATJykU