[Choir] Singer's Masks, etc

[Donia Prince]

Hello!

Thanks to everyone for our gathering this last Thursday--what a lovely time
it was to be together again!
With recent news I'm feeling somewhat less hopeful about conditions turning
back towards the better.  And so thinking it is worth looking into options
to make singing with masks easier and more pleasurable (as we talked about
at rehearsal) sooner rather than later.

The two main options are face mask frames and singer's masks.  I have
ordered one set of these frames to see how they work:

https://www.4ocean.com/products/4ocean-face-mask-support-frames?variant=37976782405825

In general, however, I'm not sure they will work well enough to sing in.  I
looked up some other styles of frames, and many comments say that while
they work great for general breathing, they tend not to be big enough to
allow you to open your mouth wide without them sliding out of place.  The
ones in the link are a little more expensive than the silicone ones that
are more common, and might be better.
Various online sheet music outlets now sell singer's and instrumentalist
masks, and don't sell any mask frames, so that also speaks against
them, but we'll see.

This is the mask that Nan showed at rehearsal--seems to be the standard for
this type of mask:
https://www.broadwayreliefproject.com/singersmask

I'd be interested in anyone's thoughts about all of this, and also
interested to hear who would be willing to contribute towards a purchase of
these masks for the choir, if we decide we should do this.  There just
wouldn't be money in the budget for the church to pay for 20 or 25 of them,
but we could probably provide some, if enough people were to pay for their
own.  If we order more than 20 there is a 5% discount (not huge, but
something.)

Reminder there is no rehearsal this week--the 22nd.  We'll meet again on
the 29th.
Donia
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