Above is a screenshot from Fredonia High School’s performance of “A Christmas Festival.” The virtual performance featured Fredonia students, community members, and alumni.

As the world continues to adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic, many groups and clubs have had to adapt to different restrictions and find new ways to maintain events.

For the Fredonia Symphonic Band, they, like many others, turned to Zoom for their yearly Christmas performance.

The Winter Concert at Fredonia is always a little bit of a different performance, as director Andy Bennett extends the invitation to participate from his students to community members in Fredonia and Fredonia alumni. The same piece, Leroy Anderson’s “A Christmas Festival” is performed every year, and although the concert wasn’t done in person, the show had to go on, much on the initiative of the students.

“My kids are great,” Bennett said. “We’ve always had a tradition of playing ‘A Christmas Festival.’ The students really wanted to know if there was any way to replicate it even though we don’t have any in person concerts. We’ve done other virtual performances between last spring and this fall, and we threw around the idea to do this virtually.”

“I wasn’t sure how many people would be interested in it outside of students,” Bennett continued. “It’s different having to record yourself rather than walking up on stage but almost 100 people, including community members, college professors, alumni, and students showed up to perform.”

Despite being virtual, the performance was a pretty big hit. The video, which was uploaded to YouTube, has surpassed 1,000 views since it was uploaded on Dec. 21, and is a testament to the passion and commitment the Fredonia community has as a whole.

“A lot of people would say it’s nice to have something to play for again,” Bennett said. “Especially community members and alumni. There haven’t been a lot of performances or ways to make music together, and we got lucky that it worked out with instrumentation. It was really a labor of love editing things together, but it was totally worth it seeing how excited the kids were when I showed them the final product.”

The organization of the concert came together in around four weeks, as Fredonia High School has had practice doing virtual concerts before. The school had done a “Lean On Us” concert that was dedicated to essential workers, which took a few months to bring together, but this one had to come together in time for the Christmas season.

The outreach of the concert hit people from several different eras, including people who graduated from Fredonia in the 1950s. Bennett is proud of his students ability to give back to the community and recognize those who came before.

“We got a lot of nice messages from the community and participants,” Bennett said. “It’s one of the best things about the music program at Fredonia, is we teach our kids how to give back. We’re very appreciative to all our students, community members and alumni for putting time into being a part of it. It’s one of the reasons Fredonia is a great place to work and live.”

Though the COVID-19 pandemic has been hard and people are eager for things to return to how they were, Bennett said that some practices adopted during the pandemic may stick around once it’s over.

“It’ll be interesting to see when COVID-19 is over how much of what all of us as teachers are using now we continue to use in some way,” Bennett said.

Those who wish to view Fredonia’s performance of “A Christmas Festival” can do so at this link: https://youtu.be/OvPqrvGyX9E