Singing for the Season New Churches’ Choir to Perform Emmanuel Sunday Jessica Giard/Sun
After hearing her own daughter sing in a Christmas cantata in Winner, Kathleen Brooks liked it enough to create a similar event in Chamberlain.
She started with her own church – hoping Pukwana Free Lutheran and St. Olaf’s Lutheran could come together to perform a musical celebration of Christmas. Then, she opened the invitation to all singers from area churches, forming the Chamberlain Community Churches’ Choir.
The results can be heard Sunday during the 45-minute performance of Emmanuel: Celebrating Heaven’s Child at St. Joseph’s Indian School Chapel at 7 pm.
“I’m just really thankful for the way it came together,” said Brooks.
The 25 choir members represent at least a half dozen churches from Chamberlain, Oacoma and Pukwana. Over the last two weekends, the group also held rehearsal performances at Sanford Mid-Dakota Care Center and at Regency Assisted Living.
Brooks’ primary goal in coordinating the choir was to bring together like-minded people to celebrate, musically, the birth of Christ in Christmas.
“I want (the audience) to have a deeper meaning about what Christmas is all about. Emmanuel means ‘God is with us’,” she said.
Practices started in September and the group grew as invitations were answered, phone calls were made and more volunteers were convinced they could sing.
Faye Stryzewski is directing the group of adult singers, who differ from her usual performers – Chamberlain high school students.
“I’ve never done anything like this with adults,” said Stryzewski. “I think a lot of people are outside of their comfort zone. It’s a talented group of adults.”
As a side result, both Stryzewski and Brooks admit the choir has brought together people who have never met before.
“I love the unifying agent of singing. It brings together people with a common love,” said Stryzewski. More simply, as her husband Scott put it, “It’s a real social group.” Brooks said, above all, it’s about the music.
“You have to have music that is beautiful. It’s just beautiful,” she said.
Stryzewski said she thought the churches’ choir is the first of its kind in Chamberlain, at least in the past 30 years. Brooks hopes the Christmas performance continues, saying she’d like to call it the first annual performance, but realizes performances in the future may not come together.
“But, why not have it for our community? We’re big enough we should do things like this all the time,” she said.
Pictured: Judy Binder (far right), Denise Fluth, Mary Brown and Leanne Olivier (far left) sing during the rehearsal performance on Sunday, Dec. 13 at Regency Retirement.
After hearing her own daughter sing in a Christmas cantata in Winner, Kathleen Brooks liked it enough to create a similar event in Chamberlain.
