Letters

Newtown Choral Society Concert Heralds The Holiday Season

Published: Dec 11, 2025 4:01 pm

To The Editor:

The Newtown Choral Society presented their fall concert, “Songs of the Glorious Season” to a capacity crowd on Saturday, December 6 at The Meeting House.

Our director, Mary Andreotta, led us in a program highlighting Z. Randall Stroope’s “Hodie,” followed by classic holiday carols and a community sing.

The entire concert was supported by a 6-piece brass choir, which heralded the choir’s entrance with an exhilarating fanfare. We were delighted to also be able to add a timpani and extra percussion to the choir’s performance.

As always, our accompanist Phil Crevier supported us with his inspiring concert performance, this time on two different keyboards. We thank our page turner, Karen Pinto and we were delighted to welcome back member Amber Harris as ticket taker.

We thank Jonathan Gamble for transporting our equipment from the Meeting House and Rob and Kirsten Bazuro for their ever present trailer. And the Town of Newtown for storing our risers between concerts.

And we thank the Newtown Congregational Church and the Rev. Mathew Crebbin for inviting us into the Church for our rehearsals.

After the concert we were privileged to meet at the welcoming home of Jo & Jonathan Gamble for our after-concert get-together. We thank them.

The choir would specifically like to thank Nancy Dvorin for creating and supporting our social media and Peg Heetmann, our long-time treasurer. And Patsy Beddoe-Stephens for her kind support.

We thank The Bee for their invaluable support in publicizing our concert.

And we were delighted to see Bill Glass stop by and take some of his wonderful photographs.

Finally, as always, we must thank my husband, Kenneth, for his computer expertise, his muscle, and his patience.

The Newtown Choral Society, (newtownchoral.org) now completing its 39th year, will begin rehearsals for its spring concert in January. We welcome new members from all area towns and have openings in all voices. Our soloists come from our membership. We support ourselves through dues, program ads and concert tickets.

If this is your time to raise your voice in song, if you have thought of starting to sing in a group in a supportive atmosphere, or returning to singing, call me (203-313-3064) or e-mail me (lel-choir2@se-ltd.com) for membership information or to be added to our distribution list to be notified of when rehearsals begin in January. We perform two concerts a year and practice Wednesday evenings at the Newtown Congregational Church, 14 West Street.

Laura E. Lerman

President

Newtown Choral Society

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Real people were just in a frightening car accident. To immediately frame their misfortune as rhetorical ammunition against new housing — affordable housing included — feels less like concern for “health and safety” and more like opportunistically using a scary moment to support a pre-existing position. If we’re going to debate this proposal, we should do it honestly: with data on traffic volume, accident history, engineering recommendations, and the town’s housing needs, not by seizing on a single crash as proof that 300 apartments are inherently unsafe. Newtown deserves a thoughtful, fact-based conversation about growth, safety, and affordability — one that doesn’t turn other people’s bad day into a political talking point.

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To add context that did not occur at the meeting would not be an accurate representation of the meeting and would, in fact, be editorializing to shape public opinion. The editorial staff here do not consider ourselves to be final arbiters of what the truth is (and if we did, it would make us partisan and biased), and we would need to provide a source for any dissenting information (sourcing all information in an article is literally Journalism 101). There were no such sources present at the meeting in question, and so it would not be appropriate to include such information in an article about the meeting. Dissenting voices appear in meeting stories when there were active participants with dissenting opinions, such as during public participation or the words of a council member who disagreed. It should be noted that the Interfaith Council, like many local boards and commissions, conduct meetings that are open to the public. This was not an article on the actions of the Greater Danbury Area Unites for Immigrants, or on immigrants, or on ICE's actions in the community, where including other voices or perspectives would be appropriate. We appreciate your opinion, but we stand by our meeting coverage and consider this discussion closed.

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Propaganda is the systematic dissemination of information, often biased or misleading, to shape public perception and behavior toward a specific political cause or point of view. I'm not asking for Newtown Bee to editorialize, but providing context, where appropriate, to provide the reader with a more holistic view of the facts seems like a reasonable practice, particularly when encouraging the reader to decide what to believe/not to believe. Absent that context, this feels biased and misleading and intended to shape public perception.

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Newtown Choral Society Concert Heralds The Holiday Season

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