Christian Music News: Youve got to start somewhere (2024)

The original contingent of pre-choir school Choristers on the way to Montreal in May 2015Having decided that we wanted to create a new and more dynamic children's choir at Met we had to figure out where to start. At this particular moment we had five singers who we knew we could count on to sing with us, but that was it. We knew we needed more singers, but we had to decide exactly what and who we wanted. Yes that's correct -  we chose our original group of singers!STEP ONE: Choose [...]

The original contingent of pre-choir school Choristers on the way to Montreal in May 2015Having decided that we wanted to create a new and more dynamic children's choir at Met we had to figure out where to start. At this particular moment we had five singers who we knew we could count on to sing with us, but that was it. We knew we needed more singers, but we had to decide exactly what and who we wanted. Yes that's correct -  we chose our original group of singers!STEP ONE: Choose [...]

Musician Musician
Jun 2, 2023 - 00:00
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Youve got to start somewhere
The original contingent of pre-choir school Choristers on the way to Montreal in May 2015Having decided that we wanted to create a new and more dynamic children's choir at Met we had to figure out where to start. At this particular moment we had five singers who we knew we could count on to sing with us, but that was it. We knew we needed more singers, but we had to decide exactly what and who we wanted. Yes that's correct -  we chose our original group of singers!STEP ONE: Choose singers who get it. We wanted singers who we knew would be committed to what we were trying to accomplish. We were halfway there, because we knew we wanted to develop a professionally competent choir, but how did we go about selecting who would sing in it? First, we decided that quality was more important than size. We wanted smart kids, who could focus and who would want to learn. For us at the beginning, this was much more important than the beauty of the voice! You can train almost anyone to sing well with a bit of work, but you can't create that special spark in a kid. So with this in mind we looked over the list of our current group of singers and after much discussion we found that we had seven additional singers that we wanted to add to the original five who had proposed the idea.STEP TWO: Sit down and speak with each singer individually Having made our list, we sat down with each singer and explained what we were trying to do. We asked them if they might like to be part of the experiment, but only after being very clear that we expected commitment and hard work. We ended up with a very young group of singers, but they all had one thing in common: they wanted to be part of something very special.STEP THREE: Time to sit down and talk with the parents. Having assembled our future Choir,  the next step was to sit down with the parents and fill them in on our great adventure. At this meeting we told them that within four years we hoped that this choir would be one of the best choirs of its kind in Ontario (be on the watch over the next year as you follow this blog for the gradual change in this vision!) and to accomplish this we needed all twelve singers at rehearsal every week. We also needed the parents to believe in the importance of undertaking the project and to commit to it. We may also have mentioned something about going to England when the choir was ready, but the parents didn't seem convinced that this would be possible. However, with great enthusiasm everyone agreed to follow the rubrics laid down, and with that we had embarked on our remarkable journey!STEP FOUR: Best to get the approval of the Church Board. In my then fourteen years at Met we had made several tries at a first-rate children's choir, but nothing had ever really materialized. I am sure no one looking in really had much faith that this time would be any different, yet nonetheless we decided it was best to present our proposal to the church board and ask for their blessing. Unanimously they agreed to support us, a decision made all the easier by the fact that we weren't asking to change or increase our already approved annual music budget. STEP FIVE: Time to sing! And so, on the first Thursday in June in 2015, at 530 in the evening, The Metropolitan United Church Choir School began its trajectory towards greatness! We laid out the music for the first rehearsal: a couple of anthems, a set of Preces and Responses and some hymns. We warmed up and then started to look at Peter Aston's set of Preces and Responses. They seemed simple to us, but clearly not to our newly assembled choristers. Feeling slightly less than excited we put these away and tried a simple hymn instead. While this went better than the responses, we still weren't exactly sailing through the music. Perhaps this was going to be harder than we at first thought!At the end of an hour of practice we had come to three conclusions:1. Our kids absolutely had to learn to read music and sightsing.2. Everyone needed to learn to sing properly, so proper voice lessons were an immediate necessity.3. While it hadn't gone spectacularly in our minds, our choristers left the rehearsal room flying. They truly felt that they had been chosen to be part of something special.. They were in fact correct about that. We learned to love the kids first and worry about their musical training second. That turned out to be the key to every success from there on in!
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