In its bid to bring some festive cheer while adhering to COVID-19 regulations, Gozo’s Gaulitanus Choir recently presented Yuletide Bliss, a mini-series of three varied musical events between Christmas and the New Year.
The first event was held on December 27 at the Sannat parish church. Entitled Strings in Concert, the concert featured the Gaulitanus String Orchestra led by Marcelline Agius and conducted by Colin Attard. The programme included works by Mozart, Jenkins, Rowley, Beethoven and Morricone.
The second event, titled Folk-Inspired: A Violin-Piano Recital, was held on December 29 at the Kempinski San Lawrenz. It featured up-and-coming Gozitan violinist Pierre Louis Attard and Serbian-born pianist Milica Lawrence in a most atypical repertoire consisting of a number of catchy folk-inspired classical works from different countries, including from Malta’s own Alex Vella Gregory and Stephen Attard.
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The pandemic has been hard on us all. As a choir we ve had to halt our rehearsals and concerts, and we ve missed our audiences terribly.One of the choir s traditions has been the Maltese Carols Project , and we ve done our best to keep the tradition going even in the middle of the pandemic. For several years in a row now, Cappella Sanctae Catharinae has released one carol each year from an old collection that were on the brink of extinction, were it not for the late Mr Joseph Zammit from Birkirkara who, a few years before his passing, hummed and sang these carols from his childhood into an old tape recorder and passed them on to us. Jien Tifel Fqajjar is a combination of two carols that we pieced together to form the melody you hear in this recording.Although the pandemic may have hit the arts hard, it s also hit others in ways that have hurt. The Franciscan community of Ta Ġieżu in Valletta is one community for whom donations have dried up completely, right as they