This year’s The Jersey Bounce Christmas Show is going virtual to bring the festive spirit into homes in Jersey and beyond.
The popular Christmas concert, which is the annual finale for the thirteen piece, semi-professional band, is a night of festive fun including live music, dancers and special guests and has sold out every year for the last five years. But with the Jersey Opera House closed due to coronavirus restrictions, the 2020 concert was in doubt.
“Our Christmas show is always the highlight to our year and not being able to perform has just been so sad. It’s been a tough and challenging 2020 for a lot of people on the island and we were desperate to give everyone some Christmas cheer so we decided to record a very special ‘online’ Christmas show. We wanted the show to be available free of charge to anyone who wanted to watch and so we contacted Ravenscroft to see if they could provide some sponsorship and they immediately said yes and helped save Christmas,” said The Jersey Bounce’s Mark Willmett.
“We did a similar online broadcast for ‘Liberation 75’ earlier in the year and its was watched by over twenty two thousand viewers and I have no doubt our Christmas concert will be even more popular.”
Several weeks ago, a behind closed doors performance at the Royal Jersey Showground was recorded by Stage 2 and filmed by Submarine Creative.
“We have chosen ten great Christmas crackers for our audience to enjoy, from Rocking Around the Christmas Tree to Fairytale of New York. We will also be showing some of the highlights from last year’s Opera House and there are a couple of other festive surprises as well,” said Mr Willmett.
“The performance was a lot of fun but logistically challenging as we had to reduce the numbers in the band but ensure we could still cover all genres of music, we maintained social distancing at all times, everyone wore masks unless we were filming, we took the temperature of everyone as they arrived and we used a lot of hand gel. We know it will be worth it come Christmas week when the concert is streamed.”
Patrick McConnell from Ravenscroft said the company hadn’t hesitated in agreeing to sponsor the concert. “This is a brilliant community event that will bring much needed Christmas cheer to islanders and it is an honour for Ravenscroft to play a small part in making it happen. 2020 has been a year like no other and we hope everyone enjoys the concert and that we can look forward to The Jersey Bounce delighting the crowds in person again soon.”
The concert will be shown on Wednesday 23rd December at 8pm, through The Jersey Bounce’s Facebook page
