Carols by Candlelight preview by Sue-anne Nixon.
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Forbes Town Band and guests held a final rehearsal last night ahead of this Sunday’s Carols by Candlelight, to be held at Victoria Park.
The annual event, which is coordinated by Forbes Town and District Band with support from Forbes Shire Council, Mitchell Conservatorium of Music and the Forbes Lions Club, will have a new format this year, designed to make the event more family friendly and concert-based.
With the assistance of Forbes Shire Council, the rotunda will be used for the invited guests to sing from, while the band will have a separate stage recently purchased by council. Both of these performing areas will be wired for sound so that the public can enjoy both the vocalists and the instrumentalists.
The carols will run from 7-9pm at Victoria Park, with MC for the evening, Richard Morgan. Richard himself is a highly accomplished musician and has consented to act as MC so that the evening flows smoothly.
The council are supplying their wide movie screen so that words can be projected for the carols. There will also be word sheets (published in Saturday’s Advocate) supplied for those who would rather a song sheet.
The area behind the rotunda will be sectioned off with council bunting to encourage families to sit together and sing and not be moving around during the performances.
The Town Band will be selling glow candles and the Forbes Lions Club will have a delicious barbeque ready all night.
A new feature this year will be a special guest. Santa will be visiting Victoria Park from 6.30pm to 8pm. In other years Santa would arrive and the children would only see him for a short while and he would quickly leave.
This year Santa has a bit more time to spare and so he will be seated in a special Santa area where families can visit Santa and have their photograph taken. Families are asked to bring their own camera! The only cost is a gold coin donation. This donation will be used by the Town Band to maintain instruments for the next year.
Carols performances start at 7pm with the Town Band playing Christmas songs from around the world for the first half hour followed by the Forbes Senior Singers singing as special guests. This wonderful choir will be singing two carols that highlight the joy of Christmas and carol singing.
At 8pm it will be dark enough to open up glow sticks and start joining in community carol singing.
Their will be an official welcome from our mayor at 8pm followed by a series of guest performers who will sing their own carols and then lead the audience in two community carols.
This new format of having the guests artists throughout the night leading the singing should give the night a warm carolling atmosphere with lots of people in the audience joining in.
The evening will also feature a student message and a minister’s message. These two messages will give emphasis to why our community comes together at this special time of the year to celebrate.
Come along to carols this year with your rug and folding chairs to celebrate the Christmas season in song.