The New Jersey Choral Consortium Newsletter

With our choruses on hold and our families hunkered down at home, we all miss the inspiration and companionship of singing together. During this difficult time, NJ Choral Consortium encourages every choral music lover to donate to the chorus of your choice in the amount of a pair of tickets.

Although we can't meet with you in person, NJCC wants to help our members in any way we can. Here's what we came up with so far. If there's another way we can help your chorus, please email us.

A few days ago we emailed a membership survey to help us plan for the future. We sent it to 1 person per member chorus; if no one in your chorus received it, or you have any questions about the survey, please email us.

We all worry about what the future will look like for our choruses. NJCC invites you to share your suggestions and questions for coping with the impact of the pandemic on your chorus. Post them on our membership portal Chorus Connection bulletin board (where other members will see them), and we'll share them in the next newsletter. Don't know how? Email us.

If you want to use your down time to find emergency funds, try virtual rehearsals, learn about grants and nonprofit management online, create a disaster plan for next time, showcase your choir online, or attend a Chorus America conference without leaving home, check out the resources listed below. And make sure you read the Note to Members at the end of this newsletter, so your choir's concerts will show up on our concert calendar in the future.

Have you heard about this recent 2-hour webinar? A Conversation: What Do Science and Data Say About the Near Term Future of Singing is now available online free of charge. Medical and choral experts talk about how and when choruses can sing together safely, and the prognosis is not good. Per an online summary, there is no safe way for singers to rehearse together until there is a COVID-19 vaccine and a 95% effective treatment in place, at least 18-24 months away.

Chorus America will hold its first-ever virtual annual conference June 17-20. Registration is now open, with early-bird rates until May 15. Chorus America also has a helpful web page with resources to help choruses and individual musicians during the pandemic, with links for relief funding, emergency preparedness, and virtual events.

Wondering how to make virtual performances and rehearsals happen? Our singing friends at Chorus America and GALA Choruses have practical tips, but so far there's no way multiple singers at home can sing and hear everyone else in synch online. They can sing one at a time while listening to the director or leader, or sing along with a recording or accompanist, but there's always a little delay. If you have a tech guru and your singers are up to it, you can ask each singer to sing along with a click track or conductor video, submit the recording to you, and assemble them all into a whole performance.

If you already have video clips of your chorus singing (with copyright clearance), you can share them online to help lift some spirits. ACDA invites choruses to submit Youtube videos to their Virtual Concert Hall, and they even provide instructions. NJCC is planning something similar for our website.

Monmouth Arts has an online list of arts resources for immediate and future needs (not just for Monmouth County). They list sources for health information, emergency grants, online learning and fun for kids, help for artists and nonprofits, virtual exhibits and performances, arts funders, and ways to donate where it's needed most.

The Performing Arts Readiness project has sample emergency preparedness and disaster plans prepared by performing arts groups. You can download them at no cost to create or update a plan for your chorus to use now and keep on hand for the future.

If your chorus board or staff has time on their hands these days, try the free online training in nonprofit management offered by the Allstate Foundation Nonprofit Leadership Center. Topics include finances, fundraising, governance, and strategy.

If your chorus is hunting for foundation grants, you can find online resources, funding announcements, advice, and webinars at Grant Space, Foundant Technologies and Grant Station. Some resources are free, some paid, but there's no charge to be on their email list for info updates.

Most concerts planned for this spring by our member choruses have been cancelled. We'll reactivate our website concert calendar in whenever our members are able to perform again. But we'll be changing the way it works, so your chorus will have to change the way you submit your concerts and other events to our calendar.

All concerts and events shown in our website and newsletter calendars will automatically come from the calendar on our Chorus Connection membership portal. At least one representative from each member group must have an activated account on our portal in order to post your events. If you haven't activated your account, you don't know how, or you're not sure if your group has a rep with an activated account, email us.