The New Main Stage
MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020
TO OUR ENTIRE OIGC COMMUNITY,
We sing for ourselves. We sing for one another. We sing for you.
From the very beginning, our board and staff have put the health and well-being of our performers and audience at the top of our priorities, shifting to online rehearsals even before Shelter in Place orders began. Pausing in-person rehearsals was a difficult choice. Since then, we have consulted with medical experts and carefully studied the facts about Coronavirus. We concur with the experts who tell us that singing in a group setting, in-person and indoors, is one of the most dangerous activities for transmitting COVID-19.
Today, we have made the difficult but prudent decision to suspend traditional in-person rehearsals and performances until they can be produced safely. While advances are being made every day, the consensus is that an effective vaccine and/or treatment option may be a year or more away. We believe these breakthroughs will provide the safety required to rehearse in person together again, as well as the confidence our audiences will need to return to large halls to hear us perform.
In the meantime, we’re not going to stop singing.
Affirming our mission, Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir will continue to inspire joy and unity among all people through black gospel and spiritual music traditions. We will continue to make music in every possible way that is safe. Since this stay-at-home season abruptly began, we have worked hard to keep our community connected. We held our Annual Spring Concert and Workshop online, and we continue with choir rehearsals over Zoom. Our documentary film "One Voice " aired on KQED public television. We celebrated our OIYC high school seniors with a fabulous virtual Senior Sending ceremony.
In short, we haven't stopped.
We will continue to create online and socially-distanced opportunities to maintain our close community. We will think outside the box to offer our music and our hearts out into our world. Even though our in-person world is paused right now, OIGC is devising ways to make this intermission the new main stage. We have several new projects in development, and we invite you, the OIGC family, to share your ingenuity and imagination, and your time and talents, to help OIGC sing through this adversity. We feel confident OIGC will weather this storm – after all, in 35 years, we have already come A Mighty Long Way!
Thank you for your love and support during these most difficult times. We need each other more now than ever, and together we will get through this with a song in our hearts. We will not stop singing.
Terrance Kelly, Maren Amdal, and Michael Gooding
