Beautiful music is blended with hilarious antics each year in the extravaganza “Sing We Joyous!” This year’s 16th annual event will be 7:30 p.m. Dec. 11 and 4 p.m. Dec. 12 at First United Church of Oak Park.
“We’re really interested in sharing the fun that we have putting it together,” said founder William “Bill” Chin of Oak Park. “It’s a joy to come up with ideas. I hope that people come and enjoy it as much as we enjoy making it.”
As usual, the event will include the three choruses that Chin leads: The Oriana Singers, a six-member a cappella chamber choir; City Voices, a community chorus; and Pro Musica Youth Chorus. Chin’s son, Julian Chin, will lead the Sing We Joyous Orchestra and play piano for the show, as well as creating musical arrangements.
“We may be using more multimedia than we did in the past,” Bill Chin said. Old favorites will return, though. “As always, one of the highlights is ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas,'” he said. “This is an arrangement that we premiered back in 2012. It’s perfect for this year’s theme of returning to the things that we missed last year.”
Julian Chin, who created the arrangement, added, “It interweaves themes from Tchaikovsky’s ‘Nutcracker’ and Handel’s ‘Messiah’ with some original music.”
Another highlight will be a jazz “Nutcracker Suite” put together by Julian Chin.
Bill Chin’s wife, Beth Albrecht, has numerous roles for “Sing We Joyous!”
“Bill and I pretty much sit together and create the whole show,” Albrecht said. “He still is the driving force but I help more and more every year.”
Those roles this year include such administrative tasks as figuring out ticketing and doing marketing. She is also involved in artistic pursuits, including choreographing and teaching dance routines to the youngsters in Pro Musica.
“One of the pieces that the oldest kids are going to do is going to be hilarious,” Albrecht said. “They’re fainting onstage.”
Albrecht is also building costumes and wigs. Those wigs play a part in another hilarious routine.
“They’re going to start out like regular powdered wigs and then they’re going to get bigger and bigger,” she revealed. “They’ll be enormous and ridiculous by the end.”
Becki Streit of Oak Park has participated in “Sing We Joyous!” with City Voices since the beginning. “It’s really fun because it’s a multigenerational enterprise,” she said. “Part of what makes it so much fun is watching all of that come together. And watching the audience process it for the first time is such a blast.”
Streit is looking forward to being part of a chorus of silent monks performing the “Hallelujah Chorus.”
“It’s kind of a strange concept to have silent people singing a piece, but we are going to make it happen,” Bill Chin said.
Streit admitted that her being silent will surprise her family and friends. “Anybody who knows me will have a hard time wrapping their head around that,” she joked.
Selections by City Voices will also include “Angels We Have Heard on High,” “Deck the Halls,” and “Silent Night.”
“I love seeing what my dad and everyone comes up with every year,” said Julian Chin. “And I just love seeing the Oak Park and the First United community come out for it.”
In order to keep everybody safe, there won’t be singalongs this year. However, Bill Chin reported, “We have some ways for them to participate. They’re still going to have fun. I think that people want to experience a good holiday artistic endeavor — and this is it.”
‘Sing We Joyous!’
When: 7:30 p.m. Dec. 11 and 4 p.m. Dec. 12
Where: First United Church of Oak Park, 848 Lake St., Oak Park
Tickets: $25; free for ages 18 and under
Information: 773-336-2446; singwejoyous2021.bpt.me
Myrna Petlicki is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
