We’re a community choir based in Tilden, Nebraska, and we do one thing: a Christmas cantata, every December, as well as we possibly can.
The choir started as the Peace Church Choir, the congregation’s own singers, who put on a special program each Christmas season. Under the direction of Pat Miller it began to reach beyond the church, and it performed its first cantata. The choir kept that tradition going for years, until the pandemic — like nearly everything else, it skipped 2020.
Coming back from that year called for a fresh start. In 2022 Alex Ritter took over as director and the choir was officially reformed as the Tilden Community Choir, with a simple idea: gather anyone in the area who loves to sing, learn one beautiful piece of Christmas music together over ten weeks, and give it to the town as a gift. We’ve done it every year since.
We’re hosted by Peace UCC and we rehearse and perform there, but we’re not a church choir in the usual sense. Nobody has to belong to the congregation, or to any congregation, to sing with us. Members come from Tilden, Meadow Grove, Battle Creek, Norfolk, Elgin and the farms in between, and from several denominations.
What a season looks like
Rehearsals run on Wednesday evenings from mid October until the concert. We learn one work — a cantata, a forty-to-sixty-minute telling of the Christmas story in song and narration — and we perform it once, on a Sunday evening in mid-December. Admission is free. We stream it live on YouTube so family far away and neighbors who can’t get out can watch, and the recording stays up afterward. Each year the concert takes up a free-will offering for someone in our community who is in need.
More than singers
A cantata takes a whole cast. Alongside the choir there are narrators who carry the story, actors for the scenes, and a tech crew running sound, lights and the livestream. Behind them are volunteers who handle staging, costumes, recruiting, publicity and welcoming the audience on the night. If you’d rather not sing, there is still a place for you — see Join the choir.
The director
Coming from a family of many music directors – Alex considers it his joy to bring the community together during this special time of the year to provide music and hope during the Christmas season. Alex holds a bachelors degree in Music Business from the University of Nebraska at Kearney where he studied vocal performance as well as a wide range of music disciplines including cello, piano, percussion, stage performance, and directing. He has performed in many choirs, musicals, one acts, operas, and cantatas over the years – and is proud to share his time/talents with the community.