The Strangest Season in NFS History

On March 2, 2020, we sent out a save-the-date: R.E.M. and the Indigo Girls, May 17th, Brown Middle School. Nine days later we cancelled rehearsal. The concert never went on sale, and it would be six years before we sang that program.

What happened in between is the part worth remembering.

That first spring we didn't really rehearse at all. We had a Netflix party. Chris ran a sight-reading and theory session over Zoom. There was NFS trivia, a kids' scavenger hunt, an open mic, a stay-at-home singalong, and a compilation of members singing "Happy" into their phones.

In the fall we tried something harder. Registration dropped to $80 and $40, rehearsals were entirely on Zoom — where, as anyone who tried it knows, you cannot actually sing together — and instead of a concert we made a video. Everyone recorded their part alone at home. Chris and a videographer stitched it into a choral performance of Dolly Parton's "Light of a Clear Blue Morning." We premiered it as a livestream on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, January 18, 2021, partnered with the Newton Food Pantry, and raised over $1,850 in 24 hours. Several hundred people watched live. One of them wrote to us: "Last night's video livestream left me with such a warm feeling of community and a sense of hope."

We did it again in the spring with Springsteen's "Dream Baby Dream," for the Newton Schools Foundation's Calculus Project. Between the recording and the launch, in June 2021, the chorus met in person for the first time in fifteen months — outdoors, in a member's backyard in Waban.

That fall we rehearsed in that backyard every Sunday and put on a small, entirely unadvertised show on Halloween afternoon for whoever we could each invite. In December we sang at Waban Lights again, outside, after a pandemic hiatus, and went caroling in the neighborhood.

The following spring we tried once more, an outdoor show of member-voted favorites in May 2022. It was postponed the morning of, due to the heat and potential thunderstorms, and the Memorial Day makeup was called off because not enough of us could come. Some seasons end like that.

And then in September 2022, after thirty months, we walked back into the Waban Library Center and rehearsed indoors, and in December we sang Sting and Peter Gabriel at Temple Beth Avodah in front of an actual audience. "We're back!" is what the email said. It had taken a while to be able to write it.