|
|
|
|
What do you think about when you think of singing? Do you think about the
latest rock or pop craze? Or do you think about some opera singer on stage? For
me, when I think about singing, I think about All City Choir.
All City Choir is a try-out choir made up of about 60 kids in grades four
through eight who’ve come together to sing. We also have three awesome
conductors Wendy Gee, Wendy Masciotra (or who we call Mrs. M), and Eva Bettger
and we sing from September through April in our two seasons: Christmas Season
and Spring Season.
In All City Choir, we also learn how to sing properly in many different ways.
The first thing you learn is how to breath properly. We’re not allowed to
breath like this (with your shoulders), but naturally like this (with your
stomach). This is what my conductors call “tummy power”. One of the warm ups
the choir conductors make us do are these huge sighs that start from the top of
your voice and go down to the bottom of your voice to warm up our vocal chords
and get us to breath properly.
Another technique we have to learn in choir practice is we learn now to
pronounce vowels and consonants correctly. An example of that would be
pronouncing out “D”s as light “T”s. We also have to keep our mouth round and
you cannot smile while you’re singing or else it ruins the effect of the
vowels. One thing we always always must do is to pronounce the consonants
loudly. What our conductors always make us do to help us remember this is to
say “We LoVe ouR CoNSoNaNTS!”.
The last, but probably one of the most important things we have to do when we
sing, is to listen to each other and to sing with the mood of the music. If it
is a soft song we are singing, then we can’t sing loudly in the piece, and if
it is a song requiring a lot of energy, we have to be enthusiastic.
One piece we sang this year was called “Reflections of a Lad at Sea”. Our
conductor for the last movement (Mrs. Gee) was always nagging us to add more
energy into the song. The last movement was called “Ghost Ship” which was a story
about a ghost ship a sailor had seen one night. It was a scary story so Mrs.
Gee would demonstrate how we were supposed to sing by saying, “Now Listen!
Well! As I tell a tale! Of a night that shook with fear!”. I think Mrs. Gee
looked so ridiculous, that it made everyone remember how to sing the movement!
What makes All City Choir even more fun though is not just the singing, but the
many activities and concerts we do together.
We usually sing at a church downtown called “Colborne Church United” because
our conductor Mrs. Bettker can use it for free (she goes to that church), but
we’ve also sung at many other different places too. Various Nursing homes, The
Education Center, Centenial Hall, Victoria Park, and we’ve even gone to Sarnia
to perform with a choir there called The Kettle Creek choir. We also have lots
of fun nights together too, like pizza night, get-to-know-you night, cabaret
night and even a choir camp day that we have at the end of September. The
concert that stands out in my mind most though, is my last concert on April
first.
That night, we performed with the UWO choir, Rick Piche (who played the guitar)
and Matt Piche (who played fiddle). It was really amazing how well that choir
could sing. One disadvantage about the UWO choir though is that they’re really
LOUD and it makes our choir look pretty sad. At that concert, when we were
singing with them, I sware we could have stopped singing and no one would
notice! Which made matters worse was during the last song of the program I Like
A Simple Song, Matt was bouncing his head up and down and doing this crazy
little dance. I was laughing so hard I almost fell down in the middle of the
performance!
After the song was finished and I had my laugh attack, I graduated from All
City Choir. It was really sad, especially since I heard that next year the
choir is putting in lazer lights next year. It was a unique and wonderful
experience of not just singing, but making new friends. I encourage everyone
who can to try out (especially the guys since we’re short on them). It may not
be Amoboly, but it’s certainly something you’ll never forget.