Listen to the echo of the season

Adding to these celebrations is the ‘Deccan Herald Choral Festival’, which is going to be held between December 15 and December 18 and showcases some outstanding talent as far as choir singing goes.

Metrolife catches up with the choirs to find out more about their line-up and preparations for the show. Arlene, who is part of the ‘Stuti Choir Group’ from Goa, explained that a lot of planning had gone into preparing the line-up for their performance.

The ‘Stuti Choir Group’ will be performing at the St Mark’s Cathedral on December 15. Arlene said, “Ninety per cent of what we are performing will be carols, in Latin, Spanish and even Konkani, since we are from Goa. We’ll also perform some classical pieces, like Veni Emmanuel. Our conductor is Minguel Cota.”

She added that the choir has been performing for a while now. “We’ve just had a couple of months, and we’ve been putting in a lot of practice. We’re busy almost every day with this, I hope it goes well!” On December 16, the ‘Bangalore School of Music Chorale’ will take over the stage at the Ascension Church in D’Costa Layout.

Aruna Sunderlal, who is the founder of the choir group, says that since they are prepared to perform throughout the year, what they are concentrating on at present is adapting their style to suit the audience they are going to be performing for.

“We have a prepared a repertoire of classical and festive music. As Deccan Herald was keen to present a chorale, we were only too happy to oblige,” she said, adding,
“I think our preparation consisted of looking at the audience and the location we would be performing at, and adapting the many pieces we know so it would appeal to them. Music is, after all, communication between the singer and the audience.”

She added that the singers of the choir group had been putting in a lot of effort to make sure their performance was perfect.

“Our choir is made up of singers of all ages, and they are all committed to music. They’ve been sacrificing time with their family to come and practice,” she said.

On December 17 and December 18, the ‘Paranjoti Academy Chorus’ from Mumbai will be performing at the Betherl AG Church in Hebbal and Paul Thangaiah’s— FGAF Church in Indiranagar respectively.

Roshan Dastoor, who is part of the choir, said that their style is unique in the sense that it doesn’t use any accompaniments. “We don’t sing with accompaniments — there are no pianos, mics, flutes, or any kind of musical instrument at all. It’s just our voices,” she said. She added, “We’re holding rigorous rehearsals here in Mumbai, over weekdays and weekends.”