Grandma Evie's Big Program

This post is for our kids and grandchildren. We (and especially Grandma Evie) always enjoy posts and pictures of programs with our kids and now grandchildren. But this post is not about one of their programs, but about Grandma Evie's big program - Grandma Evie singing George Frideric Handel's Messiah in its presentation by the Park City Interfaith Council on Sunday, March 20, 2016.

This was a pretty big deal.  They had a conductor from New York City and professional soloists and performed in the Eccles Center in Park City. It is a very nice venue. See below.

Handel's Messiah is one of the most famous and beautiful oratorios, especially at Easter since it celebrates the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, with the words taken from scriptures. So it is a great experience to participate in the presentation of the Messiah, but it is also difficult to perform. Like our hymns in church it has four part harmony (soprano, alto, tenor and bass), but it is really not at all like our hymns because the music and parts are so much more complicated. There are a lot more notes with a big range (very high and very low notes) and parts that often go very fast. Not only are different parts singing different notes, they often start and stop at different times. It is not easy music to sing and for a choir member easy to get lost and confused.

This was a "sing along" concert so members of the audience could join the choir in singing some of the choruses, and a few did. But really not very many in the audience actually sang much, because although the music is beautiful to listen to it is frankly very difficult to sing unless your are very familiar with it and have practiced your part.

However, Grandma Evie and the other choirs members had practiced a lot, both at their rehearsals and at home, and it showed because the choir sounded great. Here's a picture of the choir (taken at the end when they're giving flowers to one of the soloists). The arrow points to Grandma Evie in the alto section.

 Aunts Marie and Kathy, along with Daniel and Sydney, came up for the performance.

I don't have a video or sound recording of the performance, but here is a link to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's recent video of the Hallelujah chorus, the most famous chorus in the Messiah. Aside from the fact the the Tabernacle Choir has 360 members (compared to 100 in Grandma Evie's choir) and accompanied by a full orchestra (rather than an organ in the Park City performance), it pretty much sounds the same.

Messiah - Hallelujah Chorus