Lovely, but it’s a concert choir and most churches don’t sing those beautiful sacred melodies with the kind of ability these choirs do. I do miss the old sacred songs and have tried to sing some of them, or did before I got sick.
We are a small choir of amateurs, with one staff singer per voice part to make sure there's an anchor. The rest of us are NOT professionally trained, NOT a concert choir, NOT beautiful voices.
BUT - with a good director who selects music within the ability of the choir, AND with a willingness to learn and concentrate, even a small amateur choir can sound very, very good. For example, we sing all the old Renaissance motets (especially the English ones) because they were originally intended to be sung with a small choir, by amateurs.
Our man has had charge of the choir for about 4 years now, and you can really hear the difference. Rumor hath it that the music is attracting people from all around the north side (probably a lot of renegade Episcopalians in that bunch).
We are going to make a recording soon, and then I can demonstrate how well we do sound! (I may have my husband the amateur recording engineer mike us up some time, just for grins. He's got all the equipment.)