Music Teach.n.Tech

Last year I was able to participate in Virtual Choir 4: Fly to Paradise, which was fantastic. So I got really excited when I was able to share it recently with my school and then tell them about the world’s first Virtual Youth Choir which has recently been launched.

Singers aged 18 and under can take part in this choir, which will be premiered at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Children need to sign up and submit a parent’s/guardian’s email so they can confirm their child’s participation. The learning tools are all publicly available so parents and teachers can help singers to learn the song.

Once they’ve got the song down, singers can video themselves singing the song and upload it to the website. All the videos are brought together in a mind-boggling feat of editing to form one massive online choir.

The dealine to submit videos is June 8 (midnight, UTC-11), so if you haven’t visited the Virtual Youth Choir already, click on the image below to get started!

Why am I counting sleeps? Because come August 13, my other half and I are on long-service leave and we’re heading off to France! This has been a life-long dream for me, so I’m very excited that it’s finally happening.

In the meantime, I apologize for altogether disappearing from the radar for the last few months. It has been stupidly busy, and to be honest, I kind of lost the habit of blogging. I am resolved to turn back from the dark side, though, as I really do much better at things when I write about them.

Secondary Schools Choral Festival

For the second year in a row, my choir had the privilege of working with renowned choral director David Lawrence. They had a one and a half hour workshop, then a rehearsal together with students of four other school choirs. All of them performed together that night for the Secondary Schools Choral Festival in Mackay last Friday night.

I was particularly excited because the song which my choir performed was actually written by one of the students. She wrote it two years ago when she was in grade ten. It impressed me so much that I was resolved to arrange it for the choir. This year I did just that, and it was performed to a very impressed audience.

I have a MuseScore file of her song in the choral arrangement, which I will post on this blog when I get a few moments to polish it up (with her permission).

The night before that performance, I attended a workshop which David Lawrence also held, this one for choral conductors. I hadn’t attended one of these in a long time, so I was really excited. Many years ago I studied choral conducting at the Brisbane Conservatorium with Dr John Nickson, which was one of my favourite classes. I spent the evening trying to reconnect with those concepts I’d learned back then, under David’s helpful guidance. It was one of the best workshops I’ve attended in a long time and I found myself wishing I could attend conducting classes.

I was especially glad because there had been a week-long choral conducting workshop in Brisbane over the recent holidays, but I had been unable to attend.

After the workshop, we all went out for dinner, during which I introduced David to Twitter and telling him why he should tweet. Who knows? Perhaps I’ll have another new follower soon…and then I’ll have to introduce him to all of you guys.