We are in chairs and most are elderly so the less obstacles to trip over the better but thank you for that suggestion. A floor layout of the church and choir area can be found here https://stpaulakron.org/parish/basics/contactus/campus-map/

I was thinking a lighted music binder might be good, something with LED and battery. Morning and mid-day services are not so bad because we get a lot of natural lighting but anything in the evening is rough and those seated near the wall particularly so. A wall mounted LED battery option might work to.

Ceiling lights are very expensive to add and would require scaffolding to reach to replace bulbs and please I do not want to create a discussion finding fault with our pastor. The word has been given and any discussion on said ceiling lights is mute.

I'm looking for a low tech solution, assestically pleasing for the church. Wall mounted battery operated lighting might be an option providing they produce enough light and avoid anything like mood lighting.

We have Mighty Brights, older ones with incandescent bulbs. They work well, and my singers with poorer vision do appreciate them, but they drain the batteries like you wouldn't believe. The newer LED ones might be less power-hungry, though.

for those with dimness issues?

I know it's not the topic of the thread, but I enjoyed this expression tremendously. It described most liturgy committees. Remember Screwtape's admonition: "Dim the lights".

ipads

Okay, so we had a similar situation.
We found an electrician in the parish who could donate some service to installing running lights on a track which he installed on the side walls behind pillars and are dimmable for those low light days. They are little LED's and work a treat. There is no harm in putting an ad in the bulletin for an electrician or lighting specialist to contact the parish. It WORKS.

ALSO another rough outback Life Hack for individual music stand sconces on a serious budget.

Use smaller LED strips (battery operated) (no longer than the length of your music stand.) Make up the same PVC Pipe style light with foil but smaller, (My recommended max size would be 30cm long for both) Attach Medium-Large bulldog clips (not those small paper clip type, serious ones 4cm wide ones) to the back of the pipe (which you will definitely paint black after doing this) with a Hot Glue Gun and then clip the clips onto the music stand. The awesome thing about cable ties is that you can get rid of the old LED's if they are somehow made defunct.

Need less power? don't use foil but keep the white inside of the pipe.
Need less leakage? Get Blue gels from a lighting store and use Gaffa Tape to tape the Gels to the lights and use PVC Pipe Caps cut in half to attach to the end.
Too heavy? Use a lower mm pipe diameter or less pipe with less LED length and Tape the battery pack to the back of your stand instead of inside the pipe.

@hugh what do you think they should do?

In our 162 year old Nave, lighting has always been a problem. The church choir has a bank of six shielded 150 watt floods directly pointing down to the choir area in the loft and aimed to cover the choir only. This is adequate but very hot in summer. There is also some bleed over to the congregation. I don't conduct the church choir, but being that the loft is a flat, wood floor and walls space with no pews, only folding chairs, and coming from an orchestra background, I bought enough lightweight, black Manhasset music stands to service choir up to 28 bodies. Four of these are the 'double' choir stands with enough width to hold two choir folders side by side and any service books or hymnals you might use. These are space saving but not as flexible as the singles.
The Compline Choirs require a different lighting strategy. Remember, it's almost dark in there especially between October and March. Since the Nave is lit only by 94 candles, the Compline Choirs need their own personal lights to see the notation and to keep the overall Nave lighting as low as possible. I bought enough recessed incandescent stand lights to service 18 bodies along with a 20 plug power strip. Since we mostly stand in a circle during Compline (there is no accompaniment except when we use hand bells) the chance of tripping on the single cord coming from the center is low. I really like the 'old time' glow of soft incandescents but a few of our Compline people don't do well in low light situations and must have two stand lights to perform. This has worked well for 8 years of our 16-18 times a year Compline. Last year my son who sings bass in the men's group recommended the two headed, two setting, battery operated, clip on, LED lights as a more flexible alternative. Skeptical, I bought a half dozen (they're fairly cheap) and gave them a test. They passed with flying colors, so i purchased another dozen. We have about half instrumentalists and half trained singers in our groups so the singers used to holding their scores in our half inch, 3 ring score binders can do same and X-out the music stand entirely. The instrumental folks, used to a stand can just clip the light on the stand. If you consider these, buy a half dozen to see if they're for you. NB: there is a long stem and a short stem version. The loft is at the rear of the Nave so we are out of sight. There is less light bleed over to the Nave as the two headed lights are focuses and directional, not flood. The only thing I don't like about the LED's is the color of the light. It's too high a Kelvin number and very blue unlike the lower K of the stand lights. However, they light only the music. I bought another dozen clip lights for our combined compline last summer. The good news is we occasionally process, in semi-darkness of course, and just add clip lights to the score binders. The result has a pixie-like parade of wobbling points of light but it gets the job done. The maximum juggle is when we process in semi-darkness holding the score binders, holding LED lights, and everyone is ringing a handbell. It sounds like '3 balls in the air' to me. The other important issue is that LED's use 1/10th the energy of incandescents. We started using our gaggle of LED music lights last summer and have never replaced or run out of battery. I'm sold. A clip on dual 2 arm LED book Reading Music Stand Light (by sunshine maker) is now $3.98 on Amazon.

jefe

Headlamps: for women only, of course.... Women may not have to wear them, but non-clerical men wearing headgear in church (actually, indoors generally) is the last surviving taboo. (I do get a bit cross-eyed seeing a guy with a baseball cap on in church especially - fortunately, it's rare in that context, but more common in other indoor locations, such as restaurants - grr.....)