New York Choral Society Announces Holiday Collaboration With Music and Ballet This December

The New York Choral Society, New York's pioneering symphonic chorus that explores unique collaboration and dynamic repertory, proudly presents their second installment of its virtual season, Our Voices with the premiere of Adolphus Hailstork's A Carol For All Children on December 15. This short art film highlights a distinctive collaboration of acapella music at the intersection of modern dance by contemporary artist Brendan Fernandes while highlighting themes of peace, faith and hope-the real reason for the season.

While a carol is a type of choral song inextricably associated with Christmas and the birth of Jesus, this humanist carol celebrates the simple idea that all children have value and are brought into the world with hopes that their future and their world will be bright and full of possibilities. Choreographed through the lens of a Queer artist of Kenyan and Indian descent, the work further highlights the need for agency and solidarity, giving all children the right to be valued, loved and nurtured regardless of race, creed or means in an equitable and loving world. Through the conduit of a contemporary and modern vocabulary, Fernandes uses childlike and subtle gestures set on a single dancer inspired by nature to personify Hailstork's 1995 work.

"While the chorus is not seen in the film, there is something wonderful about every member, alone in their spaces - each trying to reach out into the ether to imagine the one thing we cannot do at the moment - gather in community of song," considers David Hayes, Musical Director of New York Choral Society. "Once written for a holiday service at a small Unitarian Church upstate, this collaboration in such a time as this reveals the deeper implications of the work and brings it to life further through movement."

"We have lost intimacy and the ways bodies interact with each other in this current pandemic and days of political uprising, but we still have the power to carve out a new pathway for our future," adds collaborator and artist Brendan Fernandes. "Through the body of single dancer driven by an ensemble of powerful voices, our message of hope is the voice of many this holiday season and beyond."

With the full chorus including more than 150 voices, ages 19-90, A Carol for All Children will include just 40 singers, with other members to be spotlighted in the three upcoming season shorts; February 23, 2021: God is Seen; March 16, 2021: Mother to Son; and May 4, 2021: Invitation to Love. The company most recently premiered their first installation of the season, Peace unto Zion, in collaboration with artist Joyce McDonald, to explore themes of racial inequality, loss and hope.

All shorts will be released on both https://www.nychoral.org and the company's YouTube page

To post a comment, you must register and login.