CD honors choir member, parish

By ANGELA CAVE- | Comments: 0 | Leave a comment

The choir at St. Matthew's parish in Voorheesville recently recorded an album of its members' favorite hymns. The project was intended to both honor a late member and celebrate the parish's 50th anniversary.

"How Can I Keep from Singing?" was released last month and will benefit Caring Together, an ovarian cancer support group based in the Capital District (see www.caringtogetherny.org). The late Diana Burns, an alto in the choir, lost her fight to the disease at the age of 52 last year.

She loved "to make music and sing" and would have been "thrilled" about the CD, said Madge Devine, music director at St. Matthew's.

Mrs. Burns, who was a member of the 30-year-old group for eight years, pioneered and performed in a Christmas musical for nursing home residents for four of those years.

"She was always about everybody else. She had more energy even while she was sick than 100 people put together," Ms. Devine said. "She just fought [the cancer] like crazy."

The album features some of Mrs. Burns' favorite songs, like "All Will Be Well" and "Breath of Heaven," and the voices of 22 of the choir's 34 members, as well as drums, keyboard, guitar, flute and bass. The group spent five days recording and mixing at Blue Sky Recording Studio in Delmar.

"It took hours and hours and hours," Ms. Devine recalled. "It was quite an experience - much harder than any of us thought.

"The members," she continued, "give of themselves so much, as did Diana - more than anyone I know."

The CD is available for $15 at W.B. O'Connor Church Goods in Latham or by contacting [email protected]. It's already earned enough to repay Rev. Thomas Chevalier, pastor of St. Matthew's, for fronting the production costs. Future sales will go directly to the charity.

The choir currently includes two children and adults ranging in age up to 83.

"Our job is to try to make liturgies more meaningful," Ms. Devine told The Evangelist, noting: "We don't always sound as good as what's on the CD."

The Festival Celebration Choir, an ecumenical group that meets at St. Pius X Church in Loudonville, held its annual Christmas concert last weekend at St. Pius. The group has roots going back to the 1970s and features about 70 members from 40 different churches. About 30 or 40 percent are Catholic, said member Donald Drew, who described the choir as "ecumenism and entertainment" and its weekly rehearsals as "a worship service with a lot of music."

The choir puts on two annual concerts and many abbreviated concerts at nursing homes with secular and sacred music. The goal is always to promote Christian unity, Mr. Drew said: "I sing for the glory of God. It is kind of the ultimate thing - to make people's experience of worship richer." For information, see www.festivalcelebrationchoir.org.[[In-content Ad]]