Blackbird, performed by Rock Voices, 2021
A Bedford-based choir of about 40 men and women will present selections from the universe of rock music at a free concert Saturday beginning at 4 p.m. on the front steps of the First Parish Church on the Common.
Bedford Rock Voices will be performing live for the first time in more than two years. The group is one of about 20 chapters of Rock Voices, most of them in New England.
According to its website, “Rock Voices is a community choir that only sings rock music. Our mission statement is: Healing ourselves and others through song.”
Tim Bongiovanni of Bedford, who organized and directs the choir, said Saturday’s repertoire will include music that the singers were working on when the coronavirus shut things down in March 2020. The show is expected to last a little less than an hour, as “we get ourselves back into concert mode.”
Listeners can enjoy a diverse music set – “all over them map, but it fits together.” Bongiovanni mentioned Stevie Wonder and the Eagles as two of the artists covered. The inventory embraces several decades and styles, but “it does all fall squarely in the realm of popular music and rock music.”
Bongiovanni is a music producer who owns a local studio. Back in 2018 he was singing in an a cappella group on Cape Cod when he learned of the Rock Voices chain. So he organized singers from Bedford and nearby towns and launched a branch of Rock Voices based in Bedford in January 2019. The group sang together for a little more than a year.
“It was difficult for a long time for us to figure out how to maintain membership and serve the community,” Bongiovanni related. There were virtual rehearsals and even some segmented recordings off Zoom that are being mixed into an album.
“It was not the same, and it certainly was not easy,” Bongiovanni said. “But we always knew that once things got back to normal, we would be ready to go. People would come back as long as they felt normal doing so.”
Around the Rock Voices circuit, he said, “it took a long time for directors and the central organization to say we can do this in person.” Most choirs returned with about half of their pre-pandemic membership, and “I call that a win,” Bongiovanni said.
Bedford Rock Voices singers rehearse with masks, six-foot distancing, proof of vaccination, and temperature checks. Bongiovanni said masks will be a game-time decision on Saturday. The outdoor venue relaxes risk of spreading the virus.
He noted that the summer season for the entire Rock Voices chain will be music of the Beatles. “One of the best things about Rock Voices is all the choirs do the same music for any given season.” Sometimes choir members travel to other chapters and join a performance.
The normal in-person routine is weekly rehearsals. And they encompass more than singing. “It’s a very social group – it’s about building a community that makes music together.” Members often socialize together after practice.
“I’ve been a student of music for years,” said Bongiovanni, who attended Berklee College of Music. “The music of previous decades has always been highly revered in music production circles. It’s not going too far out of my way to learn about these classics. Some of them are a little off the mainstream but the access to music that we have these days is very varied.”
He added, “I’ve had the opportunity to expose younger students to a lot of great music.”
Mike Rosenberg can be reached at [email protected], or 781-983-1763
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