EDMONTON -- The University of Alberta is going to use some high-tech research methods to study if one of the oldest forms of music spreads COVID-19. The U of A choir director is working with engineers, doctors and computer scientists in an effort to see if choral singing can be performed safely.
“COVID hit the choir world pretty hard. It stopped everything,” says Laurier Fagnan, the director of the University of Alberta’s Chorale Saint-Jean.
Fagnan is starting research to see if choral music can come back. There have been instances of infections of the Coronavirus among choirs in other parts of the world, but Fagnan says there needs to be an in-depth a study of how exactly the virus is spread when people sing.
“The number one aim is to find out what is true.”
So Fagnan is getting a number of people together at the U of A to take a closer look at what happens when a number of people sing together. Everyone from sopranos to doctors to mechanical engineers will use some high- tech research techniques to see how droplets travel when people sing.
“The computational fluid dynamics lab will be looking at what comes out of the mouth with lasers and a multi-dimensional laser field and high-speed photography,”says Fagnan.
Other researchers around the world are doing studies on choirs and COVID-19 transmission but Fagnan says it’s important our country is taking part as well.
“With 28,000 choirs in Canada, 3.5 million people singing in choirs in Canada, more than play hockey, we thought we need to contribute to this.”
Their findings should be out in three months, and the hope is that the act of singing can be done safely with physical distancing and even masks. But regardless of what the research finds Fagnan says COVID-19 will definitely not bring the curtain down on choirs.
This is not going to kill choral music. The Spanish flu didn’t, the plague didn’t, choral singing has been around for more than a thousand years and it will continue to be.”
