The show will go on this fall for the Central Manitoba Youth Choir.

Rather than its usual post-Thanksgiving regional tour, the choir (CMYC) will be presenting a virtual song release later this month.

"We just felt that we really wanted to offer the singers something. We know a number of them from the past, we know the energy that's there and the long tradition of CMYC and we just weren't ready to give that up," explained Loretta Thorleifson, Corresponding Secretary with the Manitoba Choral Association.

Having to adjust to new health guidelines amid the COVID-19 pandemic, many choirs have found new ways to gather together by physically distancing themselves and wearing masks in order to continue singing.

CMYC managed to select 50 singers for this year's choir through in-person auditions held in accordance with public health guidelines.

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AMAZING day yesterday rehearsing online with CMYC2020 - wonderful, focused and energetic young people! Fantastic leadership by Director Marla Fontaine and Pianist Loren Hiebert. Shout out to Mel Urichuk for expert tech leadership!

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However, rehearsals have taking place via video conference, one of which ran from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. that evening.

The choir was divided into groups with each practicing online in one-and-a-half hour segments, then at the end of the day, the whole choir came together for a full rehearsal.

"Full disclosure -- when those faces started to flash on the screen one after the other I just had to turn my video off because I got a little choked up," said Thorleifson.

Bringing this all together into a single cohesive video production is quite the undertaking. Thorleifson says each member of the choir recorded their individual segments at home and submitted them to the committee to be compiled in to the overall music video.

Rather than a full repertoire of music, only one song was selected for the production. The song is called Ignite, a new Canadian composition written by a young composer, Thorleifson says.

The hope is to have the video complete and posted by Friday, October 16th - the original date the tour was set to kick-off.

With files from Jayme Giesbrecht.