Medford Community Chorale & Youth Chorus present first “post-pandemic” concert! “Jingle All the Way!” will celebrate the season

“After an 18 month hiatus due to the COVID 19 pandemic, the Medford Community Chorale (MCC) and Youth Chorus are back! The groups received approval from the Medford Community Schools office during the summer to resume in-person rehearsals this fall, and rehearsals are well underway for their first “post-pandemic” concert, “Jingle All the Way!” – scheduled for Friday, December 10 at 7 p.m. in the Caron Theatre at Medford High School. “Jingle All the Way!” will celebrate the season and will consist of a varied program of sacred, popular and classical holiday selections. Under the auspices of the Medford Food Security Taskforce, a portion of the proceeds from the concert ad book will be donated to the Citywide Hunger Free initiative.

  The MCC, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, may be back … but it actually never went away! The choruses were in the throes of preparing for a spring concert at Tufts University when everything came to a “screeching halt“ in mid-March 2020, due to the pandemic. When it became clear that it was going to be quite a while before the groups would be able to come together again, director Betsy Pesce, accompanist Dr. Holly Zagaria and chorale member and longtime Malden Access TV volunteer Julie Kelleher came up with the idea that perhaps the group could try to create a “virtual choir” video.

  And so, the first Medford Community Chorale “virtual choir video,” “Thank You for the Music” (Mama Mia) – with 38 participants – was completed at the beginning of September 2020, and the groups went on to create two more adult chorus videos, two youth/young adult chorus videos and their final virtual choir video, “Sing!” “Sing!” featured the combined adult and youth choruses. Because there are no geographical boundaries with a virtual performance, the chorale was thrilled to welcome participants from California, Illinois, Washington, D.C., and even from Stuttgart, Germany, and Abruzzo, Italy! Links to all of the groups’ performances may be found on the chorale’s Facebook page: “Medford Community Chorale”; the website: “MedfordCommunityChorale.org” and on YouTube: “Medford Community Chorale.”

  Sadly, the chorale has lost two of its members to COVID-19, and they will be remembered at the performance in December.

  For more information, please contact director Betsy Pesce at elizabethpesce@comcast.net or at 617-335-8155.