{"id":28245,"date":"2020-04-19T21:40:18","date_gmt":"2020-04-20T01:40:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.easternmennonite.org\/?p=28245"},"modified":"2020-07-07T11:11:59","modified_gmt":"2020-07-07T15:11:59","slug":"ems-virtual-choir-reaches-more-than-30000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.easternmennonite.org\/es\/2020\/04\/ems-virtual-choir-reaches-more-than-30000\/","title":{"rendered":"EMS Virtual Choir Shares Music with More Than 30,000"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than 30,000 views of an EMS virtual choir performance of \u201cDon\u2019t Be Afraid,\u201d by John Bell, on March 28 \u2014 more than 26,000 views on Facebook<\/a> and more than 6,000 on YouTube<\/a> \u2014 indicate that online choral singing can be meaningful, even if it comes with deep disappointment. <\/p>\n

Choir director Jared Stutzman started the project as an assignment for his online classes, which began March 18 when EMS shut down due to the coronavirus. \u201cMy hope for the project was to connect our community, give a message of hope, and test the technique for our choirs\u2019 future use. \u201cThe idea to add in voices of faculty, staff and alumni came later, and \u201cthat really transformed it into a wider thing that wouldn\u2019t have happened under normal circumstances,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cChoir isn\u2019t something you can do \u2018for real\u2019 in isolation,\u201d says Stutzman. \u201cIt\u2019s about the relationships, about blending 40 voices into one, uniting our spirits. You can\u2019t really do that singing alone in your bedroom into a video camera, no matter how nice it sounds after it has been mixed together. But when you can\u2019t get together and do the real thing, a virtual choir and lots of online chats with the choirs are a nice substitute.\u201d<\/p>\n

There were some unexpected outcomes, Stutzman says. \u201cIt didn\u2019t occur to me how much I would appreciate and enjoy listening to each participant\u2019s voice and seeing all of their faces as I worked on the project at a time when we\u2019re all feeling kind of alone. The power of seeing faces to connect us surprised me. I think the wide span of ages \u2014 faculty, alumni, high school choirs, middle school choirs \u2014 and the message of the song, that God\u2019s love is stronger than fear, gave it a poignancy that I didn\u2019t see or think about when I started it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the hope is still for the 2020 EMS Touring and Chamber Choirs to sing together again in person when it\u2019s safe to do that. \u201cWe will do our best to keep the EMS choir community strong, and we do plan to keep making virtual choir videos of some of our repertoire to share with the churches where we were scheduled to give programs this spring.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jared Stutzman used the free audio editing software Audacity, and edited the video using Adobe Premiere Elements 11 to create the video over about 50 hours.<\/p>\n

WATCH THE VIDEO<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More than 30,000 views of an EMS virtual choir performance of \u201cDon\u2019t Be Afraid,\u201d by John Bell, on March 28 \u2014 more than 26,000 views on Facebook and more than 6,000 on YouTube \u2014 indicate that online choral singing can be meaningful, even if it comes with deep disappointment. Choir director Jared Stutzman started the\u2026<\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":28170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[353,303,109,108],"class_list":["post-28245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-covid-19","tag-faith-formation","tag-the-arts","tag-touring-choir"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.easternmennonite.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.easternmennonite.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.easternmennonite.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.easternmennonite.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.easternmennonite.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.easternmennonite.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28245\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.easternmennonite.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.easternmennonite.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.easternmennonite.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.easternmennonite.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28245"}],"curies":[{"name":"gracias","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}