Margaret McGillivray, the director of music at Ark & Dove Presbyterian had an idea to collaborate with other churches in our presbytery to create a virtual choir rendition of Dan Forrest’s arrangement of Silent Night for Christmas celebrations. The idea being that churches that would like to participate would contribute singers’ recordings to a mass choir, which would then mixed and the video ready for sharing on Christmas Eve. Participating churches would receive the video to use as they would like for during the Christmas season.

Ark & Dove would like to invite their sister churches from the Presbytery of Baltimore to join them in this adventure.

The idea came about because it’s pretty doubtful that any of us will be singing Silent Night out loud in a service this year. It’s also understood that some music ministries are limited right now for various reasons and they’d like to open the virtual choir experiences that they’ve been doing at Ark & Dove up to others who may not have them.

Here’s a link to the recording of Dan’s arrangement: Silent Night https://soundcloud.com/beckenhorst-press/silent-night

Because nothing is normal, they thought it would be nice to make a big, virtual to-do of Silent Night. It’s not the same as singing it together, but maybe it can capture a little of the spirit. They’ve hired a string quartet and are currently finishing the process of recording accompanying parts and model tracks.

Member churches of the Presbytery of Baltimore are invited to collaborate to bring some light to our congregations during the Christmas season. If you’d like more information, please let Margaret know by November 15th. Recordings will be due around December 10th so there is time to edit and mix before the release of the video on the 24th. Questions? Contact margaret.mcgillivray@gmail.com.