“Mackenzie Rolf doesn’t usually bring jumper cables to choir class,” writes Rachel Alexander in Monday’s (1/25) Oregonian (Portland, OR). “But when you’ve been holding choir practice from cars parked in the Chemeketa Community College parking lot, it comes in handy—a member’s car died during a recent rehearsal. ‘It’s an occupational hazard of car choir,’ is music director Kerry Burtis’ answer to the challenge of running a performance music class during a pandemic. Rather than sing parts individually over Zoom, Chemeketa singers park in the college parking lot for their twice-weekly class. Burtis issues each a microphone that broadcasts wirelessly to a mixer, which collects the voices together, then broadcasts back out on shortwave radio. Rolf, 19, sat in her car with the windows rolled up during her recent class, singing the soprano line for ‘Shul Aroon,’ a traditional Irish song…. Her car radio was tuned to the class frequency, so she could hear the half-dozen other voices … in real time.… Burtis said it was clear last spring that in-person choirs wouldn’t be safe…. He saw other choirs get creative with in-car setups and soundboards…. ‘I did research and looked at what we could afford,’ he said.”
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