The Spoon River College Community Chorus Goes Virtual for 2020

The Spoon River Valley looks forward each year to the winter concert of the Spoon River College Community Chorus, which brings together musicians from our region. Singing in groups, however, has been shown since the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic to be a risky activity with potential to rapidly spread the novel disease. While we could have skipped our 2020 performance, we instead decided to present a "virtual concert" comprised of the full Virtual Chorus (singing the Hallelujah Chorus from Messiah​ and "Under Winter Moon") and several video selections submitted by local musicians. A virtual chorus allows people in different locations to “sing together” by recording their parts and then having an editor merge them together. Virtual choirs have been around since at least 2010, when composer Eric Whitacre became an early innovator and champion of the process. Click here for an example of a virtual choir, as several of Trinity's choir singers joined this summer with Advent Lutheran Church in Morton to sing the classic Swedish Lutheran hymn "Children of the Heavenly Father." Below are the instructions for participating in this year's concert!

(Phase Two) Submit a Performance Video for the Concert by Oct. 31

1. Record a performance video of the piece you would like to submit for the concert.
2. Please sign in to your Google account in your web browser. If you don't have a Google account, you can create one for free; however, if you are unable to create an account, please contact Colin Davis at [email protected] or (309) 338-7736.
3. Use the button below to submit the link to your video ​by October 31. Be sure to include your contact information on the form so that the concert organizers and/or technical workers can follow up with you if they have questions or need additional information. We may not have time in the concert order to include all video submissions, but we thank everyone for participating!