The Calgary Catholic School District has moved the annual Advent Choir performance from in-person to online this year.
The “Hear the Angels Sing” Calgary Catholic School District High School Advent and Christmas Choral Festival celebrates the sacred songs of Advent and Christmas. This year is the 28th year of the festival.
The event was scheduled to take place on December 6 at St. Michael’s Church in southwest Calgary.
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A CCSD spokesperson said the decision to record and share the festival online — which has been done for the past two years — was made because of the high number of illnesses in the school district, combined with the fact that viruses are spread through the air . activities such as singing and the initial plan to have various cohorts from various schools mix.
“One of my favorite things about performing is the crowd interacting and getting feedback and not being able to have that, I was a little sad,” said Taylor Miles, an 11th grade choir member at Bishop Carroll High School , said.
The annual Advent Choir Festival would have seen hundreds of students in CCSD perform at St, Michael’s Church last week.
“I was very excited to meet all the choir students from other schools as well, but now we can’t. I’m excited to see what they do in practice,” Miles said.
The Grade 11 choir members know the disappointment of canceled live performances. They were in 8th grade when COVID-19 first disrupted their lives.
“It teaches you to definitely take nothing for granted,” said grade 11 student Harold Kalinga.
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“I think it’s very important to know the gray area between what we want to happen and what needs to happen, because a lot of the time everything isn’t going to work out the way we want it to,” said 11th grade choir member Jannelle. Lecomte
Last week, CCSD announced that if a school has more than 10 percent of its students away due to illness, events such as Christmas concerts will be postponed or moved to a virtual presentation.
As of Monday, 35 out of 117 of the district’s schools currently have student absenteeism rates of more than 10%.
“We know that the gathering limits will reduce the spread and maybe put some classes online,” said Gosia Gasperowicz, a developmental biologist and a researcher at the University of Calgary and co-founder of Zero Covid Canada.
Students say the experience taught them about resilience and how to get creative.
“It also shows how passionate people are about music because we really care about this and we said we’re going to make it work somehow,” said Kalinga.
This year’s virtual concert will be released next week.
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