Christmastime, online 🎄☃️⭐️

While we’re still not able to get together and perform in real life, we can get together digitally once more, this time to celebrate Christmas! On Sunday 20 December we’ll be going live with a digital concert full of Christmas music, readings and festive cheer.

If you’d like to be part of the concert, all you need to do is email us at stratmusicals@gmail.com no later than Sunday 29 November with two Christmas song choices - they don’t need to be from a musical, anything Christmassy goes! If you’d like to do a duet or small group number let us know and we’ll try our best to help you make that happen. We also know that not everyone is comfortable singing on their own, so if you would like to share a short Christmas poem or reading instead we’d welcome your contribution.

We’ll then agree the programme, letting you know on Monday 30 November which of your two songs we would like you to perform and ask you to submit your video no later than Sunday 6 December so we can edit it all together in time for the concert. There are instructions for recording below.

As part of the concert we are also putting together a Company performance of a Christmas poem. We want as many members to be involved as possible to video a line, or lines, from a poem in their most Christmassy setting. Richard SK will then string them together into a heart-warming collective performance. All he needs is for you to let him know via email or text (richard@penchard.co.uk, 07958984065) if you are willing to take part and he'll guide you from there. It would be great to have as many members involved as possible from all areas of the group, so please get in touch and help us spread some Christmas cheer on the dark, COVID nights.

You’ll need to be a paid up member to take part in the concert, if you’re not sure if your membership is still current, either drop us an email (stratmusicals@gmail.com) or you can check via our membership site https://membermojo.co.uk/smtc (just enter your email address, you don’t need a password).

Instructions for recording

• Pick a backing track for your chosen song, make sure it has no vocals in it (YouTube and Spotify have lots)

• Please record your video in landscape not portrait

• Make sure you are listening to the backing track through headphones while recording yourself singing, your video should be vocals only

• Send your vocals video and a link to the backing track you used to stratmusicals@gmail.com, if the file is too big to send as an email attachment we recommend using a site called WeTransfer (www.wetransfer.com), we’ll then edit your video so the backing track goes along with it (if you have the ability to do this yourself, please feel free to do so and send us the finished video)

• Finally, remember to have fun, smile and perform - Christmas accessories are strongly encouraged!

We’d like to thank you for all of your continued support of SMTC, we appreciate every one of you and miss being able to rehearse, perform and get together, hopefully this digital Christmas celebration will keep us going for a bit longer before we can be together again in real life.

All the best,

Your SMTC Committee

Phil, Chris, Katie, Jonny, Anya, Lydia, Richard, Louise S and Louise T x