Building Bridges - Keep the Arts Alive

The Young Professionals Choral Collective (YPCC) kicks its 9th season with an unconventional, in-person performance on the Purple People Bridge on Friday, October 16 at 6 p.m. The free event, entitled Building Bridges – Keep the Arts Alive, is produced in partnership with The Carnegie’s newly launched Creative Disruption Committee (Carnegie CDC) and demonstrates the importance of continuing to support the arts throughout the pandemic. This will be one of the first in-person, public choral performances in Cincinnati since March. Performers will be fully masked and socially distanced for the duration of the event, lasting approximately 30 minutes.

YPCC will perform repertoire that features two original works, commissioned by YPCC through the Young Professional Composers Project. The performance also features an arrangement of Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water, signifying what the arts mean to so many people during COVID-19 times.

This event highlights how music-making and the arts can be used to build bridges between communities, even amid a pandemic. Audience members can expect to be reminded of how important the arts are to the fabric of society, especially throughout Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. The Carnegie CDC specializes in producing safe, socially distant live performances for the public to continue to enjoy. Select members of the Cincinnati Boychoir, as well as theatre industry professionals through the League of Cincinnati Theatres, will be joining for portions of the performance.

AUDIENCE PROTOCOL: This event is free and open to the public. Social distancing and mask-wearing will be required for all by-standers and audience members on the bridge. Music will be amplified through PA speakers over a stretch of the bridge to allow all audience members to hear while still appropriately distanced. The performance will also be broadcasted on a short-range FM radio frequency, transmitted in real-time to allow audience members the ability to “tune-in” via their own handheld FM radio or car radio on the outskirts of the bridge and further away from other audience members if they so choose. QR codes will be posted along the bridge with links to programming information, including radio frequency tuning directions.