This Grand Junction Easter Tradition Will Be Sorely Missed

For the last fifteen years, the Western Colorado community has been treated to a free Easter concert. Unfortunately, given the current situation, this annual tradition has been postponed.

Since 2004, the Messiah Choral Society of Grand Junction has performed a free Easter concert featuring Handel's Messiah. Each year, the ensemble worked for months to prepare for this presentation. Sadly, for the first time since its inception, the concert will not be offered on Easter Sunday. The Messiah Choral Society of Grand Junction offered this statement at their official webpage:

This year's Easter Sunday concert has been postponed in order to comply with government issued orders to deal with the Corona Virus outbreak.

Over the last fifteen years, the concert has welcomed a number of conductors including James Werner, Monte Atkinson, and Scott Betts. For the 2020 concert, the organization invited Dr. John Howard to conduct.

Along the way, former Grand Junction Symphony Orchestra Concertmaster and former Colorado Mesa University professor Carlos Elias had been asked to return to serve as Concertmaster. For 2020, Frank Restesan was asked to serve as principal first violinist.

According to their official webpage, the MCSGJ's mission:

This concert is a musical gift to the Grand Valley community made possible by the volunteer hours of our chorus, the lifelong commitment to making music by our orchestra, soloists, and director, the generous financial contributions of our donors including the GJ Commission on Arts and Culture, and our audience as no gift has meaning without a recipient.

For the last ten years or so I've been fortunate enough to play bass with this orchestra. Under different circumstances I would be sharing photos from this year's performance. Unfortunately, that isn't the case. However, like the website says, this year's concert has been "postponed."

If I know this group, they will forge ahead, and as soon as this crisis is over, they'll be back at work preparing to make the 2020 performance a reality.

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