High school choirs and the Oberlin Choristers perform `A Festival of Carols'

LORAIN -- Students from around the county will be caroling through the night at the annual Festival of Carols, which returns this holiday season after a three-year hiatus. "Forty years ago, we put together this program to kick off the holiday season," said Ron Cocco, president of the Lorain Community Music Theater Board. "This is our first year back after Covid." And he anticipates quite a show with students from five area high schools -- Firelands High School, Lake Ridge Academy, Lorain High School, Oberlin High School and Wellington High School -- as well as the Oberlin Choristers, performing. Each group will put on a 15- to 20-minute segment for a two-hour show, which is recorded in its entirety by WEOL and replayed on Christmas morning and video taped by Lorain's local cable access Channel 20 and replayed during Christmas week. "It's a tradition," Cocco said of the recordings. Lorain Community Music Theater is a tradition as well. "For 45 years, we've been a musical theater organization," he said. "Each summer we produce a Broadway musical that is performed in mid-July or the end of July. We're a community-based organization working with all age groups and walks of life. We try to have a diverse cast and keep a current show." The 2024 production is the Tony Award winning musical 9 to 5, which takes place July 25-July 28 at the Lorain High Performing Arts Center. Proceeds from A Festival of Carols goes toward the production of the musical. "I've probably seen 30 plus years of Festivals of Carols," Cocco said. "It's a nice event from the standpoint of the schools, who usually don't get the opportunity to hear from the other schools and put together a show with the other schools, and for the public to hear them all together." Cocco hopes to bring on additional schools for future performances. "The choirs are just coming out of Covid," Cocco said. "They lost two to three years of participation because of it. We've had other schools perform in the past and we hope to get back to that as well as time goes on." The program is open to all. "We really promote the program on our Facebook and Instagram pages," he said. "We hope to get a nice audience to hear some relaxing songs for the holidays." Contact Christina Jolliffe at ctnews@chroniclet.com.