Carrickfergus Grammar School Carol Service 2020 HD

The Annual Festival of Nine Lessons with Carols has long been a highlight of our school year and one of the best memories of past students, with many returning year after year to hear again the words and music of the season. Due to all the restrictions of 2020, we have been working to produce a virtual event over the past few months. For all rehearsals and filming, the advice on social distancing and other safety measures have been closely followed and everyone involved has remained safe throughout these times. To show your appreciation of the work of our students, we encourage you to offer a donation to ‘Cash for Kids NI’ by following this link. https://www.cashforkidsgive.co.uk/campaign/charity-champions-northern-ireland-2020/fundraisers/carrickfergus-grammar-school-music-society/ The service follows the plan laid down over 100 years ago for Christmas Eve 1918, by Eric Milner-White who had returned from the battlefields of the Great War. It is familiar throughout the world thanks largely to the annual broadcasts from the Chapel of King’s College in Cambridge. The service provides a time for both choir and congregation, who this year are isolated at home but together in spirit, to reflect on the ‘development of the loving purposes of God...’ seen ’...through the windows and words of the Bible’. The carols and anthems are subservient to the words of scripture providing an opportunity for a response to the texts through traditional and contemporary music. The Bidding Prayer encourages us to reflect with gratitude to God for ‘all those who rejoice with us but on another shore and in a greater light’. The centre of the service is still found by those who ‘go in heart and mind’ and who consent to follow where the story leads. The choirs of Carrickfergus Grammar will, in turn, weave carols old and new between the readings. The Junior Choir, who of course have never actually rehearsed all together since the Year 8 students joined us in September, bring us two beautiful carols one of which is a re-writing of the words to the Leonard Cohen song ‘Hallelujah’ and also the energetic ‘Nazareth’ from the popular Christmas Film ‘Nativity’. Much of this music has been recorded by the students at home and sent in through Google Classroom to be mixed together into what you hear tonight. The Boys’ Voices of the school have also recorded music at home or in small groups to bring us the appropriate carol to round off a difficult year for so many of you, ‘In The Bleak Mid-Winter’. The Senior Choir has had the honour of leading the service over the years and we hope that when we can all rehearse together again we are able to reconnect meaningfully and build ourselves into a good choir. We have missed saying a proper farewell to last year’s Upper Sixth and, with the chance that this year’s wonderful group of musicians will also leave without the usual opportunities for concerts, competitions, tours and of course training up the next generation, we re