Roanoke Valley Children’s Choir
33rd Annual Spring Concert and First Ever VIRTUAL Concert!
Now on Youtube!
A message from the Roanoke Valley Children’s Choir:
We believe that music can have a powerful positive impact in everyone’s life and when our annual spring concert was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we knew we couldn’t let that stop us! During this time of quarantine, our choristers have practiced at home, joined us for live ZOOM video rehearsals, recorded their individual singing on their own, and have come together with us in new ways to continue the RVCC tradition and create our concert in this new virtual format. Our singers have learned new skills along the way and been challenged in different ways we never would have imagined before. We are so proud of our choristers hard work and are so grateful that we have been able to continue creating music together! The Roanoke Valley Children’s Choir is stronger than ever, thanks to all of our choir families, singers, staff, patrons, alumni, and choristers! From the bottom of our heart, Thank you!
About the Roanoke Valley Children’s Choir
The Roanoke Valley Children’s Choir has gone VIRTUAL!!!
The Roanoke Valley Children’s Choir was founded in 1987 by artistic and administrative director, Kimberly Ruse Davidson. For 33 years the RVCC has been committed to providing the highest level of choral experience for our young singers, teaching not only music but also valuable life skills of teamwork, excellence, leadership, and confidence. The RVCC has over 250 singers ages 4 – 18 in their program. The choir is divided into 5 different choirs based on age range. Over 200 choristers will be singing in the virtual concert, with over 350 individual voice tracks coming together throughout the concert! Each of our choirs will be performing 1-2 of their own songs in the Virtual Concert.
Our Choirs
Little Singers: Ages 4-6
A Choir: Ages 7-9
B Choir: Ages 8-11
B+ Choir: Ages 9-14
Concert Choir: Ages 13-18
Virtual Concert Program
Concert Choir
Come and Sing……………………. by Wallace Hornady
A & B Choirs
One Small Voice…………….by Jeff Moss, arr. Emerson
Kokoleoko………………..Liberian Folk Song
Little Singers
You Are My Sunshine………………arr. Davidson
B+ Choir
Alleluia………..…by Telemann, arr. Liebergen
Tengo (A Spanish Lesson)……..by Luke Byrne
Concert Choir
Stars and Stripes Forever………by John Phillip Sousa, arr. Kuzma
Encore
Praise His Holy Name……….….by Keith Hampton
Virtual Concert Sneak Preview!
This is a song (“I’d Like to Teach The World To Sing”) we did with 13 lovely choristers. Putting this first video together was a bit of a test to figure out how to create a virtual choir performance video. It turned out great, and it is a lot of fun!
The full Virtual Concert will feature over 200 singers, with 350 individual voice tracks sent in!
On Our Way To The Virtual Concert
Virtual Rehearsals!
Rehearsals for all of our choirs have continued each week through videos and live ZOOM meetings as we prepare and record each portion for the upcoming virtual concert!
How are we creating the RVCC’s Virtual Concert?
Making a virtual choir concert is a big project! Thank you to all our wonderful choir families and singers for working so hard with us so we can continue to create beautiful music together.
There are two main steps to creating our Virtual Choir Concert:
Step 1: Audio Recording
Step 2: Video Recording
To Record the Audio Portion:
1. Each chorister received a video with RVCC director, Ms. Davidson, directing each song they were to record with the piano accompaniment track and their voice part played on the piano for them to watch, sing, and practice with.
2. To record their individual voice audio, the singers all wore headphones while watching and listening to the video of Ms. Davidson playing and directing their songs. This way everyone was able to watch the director carefully for accurate entrances, cut-offs, phrasing, and musicality in their singing just like a real performance!
Most singers recorded their voice simply by using a voice recorder app on a mobile device. Some of our choristers really went the extra mile on their voice recordings spending several hours to get the perfect take or using a full professional mic set up!
3. Each chorister emailed their audio recording into us with the specific instructions to clearly label their audio file and email subject line so we could organize all the files. (Name, Choir, Song, Voice Part).
4. Once all the individual tracks were received and organized by song, choir, and voice part, we sent them off to professional sound engineer, Harold Thompson. During this process of syncing, balancing, mixing, and editing is where all the individual audio tracks will come together into a virtual choir performance!
To Record the Video Portion:
We are using live ZOOM video meetings to record our Virtual Concert videos! What you will see as the video in the final concert is several live ZOOM recordings of small groups in grid view edited together to form a full choir. Director, Ms. Davidson, is conducting each song live for the singers during their concert video recording to follow and sing with their best facial expressions! We even have virtual choreography that we are very excited about!
We have over 200 choristers in the Roanoke Valley Children’s Choir. To fit all of them on the screen, we have a tight schedule of 12 different smaller sized recording groups. Each chorister has been assigned to a certain “pod” with a specific call time on concert recording day!
During the video recording, all the singers are muted and only hear the audio coming from the meeting host. (The audio for the virtual concert is recorded separately as individual voice tracks.) We have an impressive production set up now where RVCC Assistant Director, Kirsti Davidson, can manage the computer and all technical aspects, while the choristers are able to see director Ms. Davidson using a separate webcam and microphone.
We all know that there is a delay using ZOOM or any online video call program. What is cool is that mostly all the singers end up having a very similar delay to each other. While we record, the singers are not in sync with what Ms. Davidson is directing live, but by the time it all gets back to us they are pretty in sync with each other for their mouths moving at the right times and even doing choreography motions!
The RVCC Little Singers in the Virtual Concert!
Even our youngest singers (ages 4-6) who are part of the RVCC Little Singers Class will be performing in our virtual concert! The Little Singers Class has been continuing virtually this semester with online video classes each week. The Little Singers all sent in individual recordings of themselves singing “You Are My Sunshine” and recorded their virtual concert videos using their own Sunshine crafts as props in the song! Their sweet little voices and adorable smiles just might steal the show!
Do you love to sing?
We would love for YOU to come and be a part of our choir! RVCC Newcomer Auditions will be offered online this May! An audition is quick and easy! Find out more about our upcoming Virtual Auditions to join the RVCC.
Donate to the Roanoke Valley Children’s Choir!
Help us continue to share music with children in our community and around the world! Your donation to the RVCC helps our program stay strong and can help to change a child’s life through music, teamwork, and friendships.
Thank you to the following for their support:
