Easter Service Brings California Church Choir Together for 1st Time in 2 Years: 'It Means the World to Us'

It’s a show two years in the making.

Members of the Lake Avenue Congregational Church choir in Pasadena, California, are preparing to perform in person together for the first time since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Experts identified singing in a large group as a super-spreader event after a choir practice in Washington State left 53 singers sick with COVID-19, two of whom died. The CDC guidelines around singing have since relaxed, much to the delight of the Lake Avenue Congregational Church choir.

The group will perform at Good Friday and Easter services, without masks on Friday and Sunday.

“It means a lot,” Phyllis Fulbright, 94, told Inside Edition.

Though the COVID-19 pandemic is not over, and infection rates are on the rise in some areas of the U.S., Fulbright said she is not nervous to perform in person.  

“It means the world to us,” Glenda Cook, who has been in the choir for 35 years, told Inside Edition.

The choir had 120 members before the pandemic. Now, the group is comprised of 70 singers who spent two years practicing virtually.

“It is unbelievable,” choir director Duane Funderburk said of finally being able to come together. “The excitement of being in the room and being able to be with our people, and I think our congregation had really missed it.”

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