Cranberry Men’s Chorus gearing up for busy Christmas season
For members of the Cranberry Men’s Chorus, the Christmas season begins long before lights go up or carols play in stores.
By mid-October, just days after wrapping up their fall “Golden Oldies” show, the 38-member group started rehearsing for one of the busiest stretches of the year, a time that includes eight full concerts and several other performances.
“It’s crazy,” said musical director Ron Brooks, who has been with the chorus for a decade. “But it becomes part of what makes the holidays special for all of us.”
The chorus, founded in 2009 as a barbershop group, pulls singers from across the region, with members ranging from their early 20s to their 80s.
For many, the holiday season is the most meaningful time to perform, in large part because of the audience reactions.
“There are tears during our performances. There’s laughter. There’s singing along,” Brooks said. “We try to bring back Christmas memories and it really touches people.”
This year’s concert series is titled Christmas Memories and was created with the intent of stirring up nostalgia.
The group has shifted in recent years toward more recognizable tunes to better engage their audience.
That shift came after a moment of realization, Brooks said, during a performance years ago at the Mars Applefest, when unfamiliar songs received less fanfare than anticipated.
“I thought, ‘Why aren’t they clapping more?’ And it dawned on me — they didn’t know the songs,” he said. “We needed music that people could relate to.”
Now, their holiday set list ranges from “Christmas Time Is Here” to “A Charlie Brown Christmas” to jazzed-up versions of “Rudolph” and a Pentatonix-style “12 Days of Christmas,” along with other classics such as “Silent Night” and “O Come, All Ye Faithful.”
“We want it to be an immersive experience,” Brooks said. “We want people to feel part of it.”
The chorus’s Christmas season is also about giving back to communities around the region.
Each year, the group performs several full-length concerts at local churches with free-will offerings. Last year, those donations generated between $1,500 and $2,000 per church, money that supported everything from food pantries to other music ministries.
“It’s an awesome opportunity for us to sing for these communities and help them raise money,” Brooks added.
This year, the chorus will perform at Dutilh Church in Cranberry, Mars United Presbyterian, Crossroads Church in Gibsonia and — for the first time — in Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood at the First Baptist Church of Pittsburgh. That performance will also be recorded by WQED-FM for its holiday broadcast series.
The upcoming Oakland concert, inside a towering Gothic-style sanctuary, is especially exciting, Brooks said.
“We walked in and said, ‘Are you sure this isn’t a Catholic church?’” he joked. “The sound is unbelievable. We don’t even need a sound system.”
The group has even been practicing in the echo-filled entrance of its regular rehearsal church to get used to the reverberation.
Brooks said one of the best parts about the group is the comradery. Nearly every member participates in the holiday concerts, which equates to a 98% turnout.
“They want to be there. It becomes part of their holiday,” he said. “I can see the joy on their faces when people are smiling or wiping tears. It’s internal, and a lot of it comes from their own memories.”
Members rally around each other during difficult moments, celebrate the good times and build friendships that span generations.
“We’ve got guys in their 20s and guys in their 80s,” Mark said. “And they all cheer each other on. They learn from each other. It’s like a family.”
