Virtual Concert is a Chanukah present from Mak’hela BY STACEY DRESNER
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ESTERN MASS. – Every year Mak’hela: The Jewish Chorus of Western Massachusetts performs special Chanukah concerts for the residents of JGS Lifecare’s Leavitt Family Nursing Home and nearby senior living community, Glenmeadow. “The last couple of years we have gone to both nursing homes in one day; we call it our ‘double-header,’” said Joni Beck Brewer, president of Mak’hela and an alto in the chorus. This year, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues, performing concerts in nursing homes is obviously not possible. So the members of Mak’hela put their heads – and voices -- together to create A Chanukah Present from Mak’hela, with a virtual Chanukah concert that not only the seniors will be able to watch virtually, but that will be available to Mak’hela fans everywhere on YouTube. The concert includes guest performances by the Jewish Community of Amherst Klezmer Ensemble Workshop. To create “A Chanukah Present” each of Mak’hela’s 25 members videotaped themselves and recorded the audio of themselves singing their particular parts in six songs. The group worked with Brian Bender, a sound engineer, musician and owner of Face The Music Studio in Shutesbury, who mixed each of the Mak’hela performances together to create the virtual concert. “We’re very excited about this concert because this is something we’ve done for several years,” Joni Brewer said. “We’re so glad that we’re going to be able to do it in some way but it took a lot. We had to learn how to do all of this different kind of work.” 6
Brewer said that the members of Mak’hela had stopped meeting just before Covid struck. “Our last concert was at the JCA at the beginning of March,” she said. “I think we had maybe two rehearsals after that and then [Covid-19] started up and we had to stop. And the more we’ve learned about choral singing it’s like one of the worst things that you can do,” she said, referring to evidence that the virus could be transmitted through aerosols expelled by people singing in close
first because none of us had ever done it before,” Joni said. “We thought we would just do one and see how it went and see how people responded. We didn’t even know if our members would go for this. A lot of them are older and not really [versed in the] technology.” So as an experiment, all of the singers sang and recorded one song – “Eleh Chamda Libi.” “It’s often the song that we come into a concert with. We process in with this very
proximity. “It’s been hard because, in addition to having concerts that we’re not able to do it’s also hard for the members because, for them, it’s more than just a place where they go and sing. People have developed relationships. One woman who had just moved to the area told me we were her only friends that she had met so far, and then she couldn’t see us.” The group stayed in touch through some zoom meetings over the past several months. Somewhere along the line the idea of a virtual Chanukah concert was pitched. “We figured, ‘Well, we better try this
lively song,” Joni explained. Bender mixed all of the voices together to create one solid performance. “We had a great response,” Joni said. “And even though some people felt like it was hard to do, when they saw what it looked like, with all of us together, they were sold on it.”
MASSACHUSETTS JEWISH LEDGER
| NOVEMBER 13, 2020
A complicated process The members of Mak’hela began to work on the recordings for the virtual concert near the beginning of October.
“To make the video, each singer had to record their voice separately in their own home,” Brewer explained. “While they’re recording that, in their headphones they’re listening to the piano or whatever the accompaniment is, so that everyone is staying on the same beat.” Everyone also had to videotape themselves singing the songs on their smart phones. “They needed two devices – like an iPad attached to their headphones, so they could hear the piano, and then another device to record themselves… We have people who live by themselves who have had to do it all by themselves. I’m very grateful that I’ve got this guy here,” Joni said, pointing to her husband Bruce, a Mak’hela board member, “because I think it’s hard. You’ve got to start recording with this one and then start that one. And you don’t want to be looking at your music the whole time. It gets complicated.” “It’s been a challenge,” agreed Elaine “Lainie” Broad Ginsberg, Mak’hela’s music director and conductor. But Ginsberg has also helped to make the process a bit easier with her own musical expertise, said Brian Bender. “The first thing I get from Lainie is a piano accompaniment track,” he explained. “She records herself playing the piano… She then also sings all of the separate choir parts and records each one as a reference for the singers. I then mix them together and generate new videos -- piano plus soprano, piano plus alto, piano plus tenor and piano plus bass -- and then I do one that is piano with all of the parts. She then sends them out CONTINUED ON PAGE 20
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