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Writer's pictureAngus McDonell & Sophia Pacione

Katching Up With the Community – Our Thoughts on the Kiwanis Youth Choir’s Dazzling Debut

Updated: Dec 13, 2022

Please listen to the audio version via the link below:

Transcript:


ANGUS: Hello FHS! This is Katching Up, and today we are coming to you in the magical, new format of audio! Recorded Audio.


BOTH: Woooo!


ANGUS: So, I’m Angus of Daily Roar fame, and alongside me I have my co-host, Sophia.


SOPHIA: Yes, hello. You might know me from Yearbook, but we kind of are reclusive so… ignore that.


ANGUS: They're great, they’re really good at their jobs. She’s too humble.


[SOPHIA laughs]


SOPHIA: Aw, thank you.


ANGUS: Anyways, last Wednesday—that’s December 7th—we went out and we saw the Kiwanis Youth Choir give their holiday concert, and it was just a great time… and we’re gonna talk about it for a bit.


SOPHIA: Yeah, no, the Deck the Halls Concert, it was really quite something!


ANGUS: It was really something. I was very, personally impressed by just how well everything went together. Did you have anything you’d like to say?


SOPHIA: Yeah, for sure. I mean… after the pandemic, having something like this, where people didn’t have much of an opportunity to practice their craft—especially the arts, you know—with masks and everything that went along with that. So, I just think it’s incredible that they could pull something off like this. And in a short amount of time, too! I was talking with one of the organisers and she told me that this was [created in] three months.


ANGUS: It was three months for all of that? Wow.


SOPHIA: Yeah. In… I think it was the spring, end of spring, they started talking about it and formulating sort of the concept, and then got help from the Kiwanis [Club] to sponsor. After that they got the members and since September they practiced, which is only three months.


ANGUS: That’s incredible. They really performed exceptionally well.


SOPHIA: Really.


ANGUS: I personally quite enjoyed it; It was a very dynamic concert. I was surprised by just how much was there. Like, you hear “Youth Choir”, and you’re expecting it will be cute, it will be fun and what not. But when we got there, it was really… the production value was very high. They had… I believe they had an opera singer come in, they had a bell choir (which was absolutely wonderful), and the choir itself was actually very, very good. They had a wonderful, professional teacher come in to get them into shape and it really, really, really shows.


SOPHIA: No, for sure. The director, Ross Simonds, he knew what he was doing without a doubt. He just… he ran the show, he managed it, so well. You can just tell he’s a professional. And everyone who worked on it seemed, though [many] were just members of the community, they really put their all into it, and it was really nice to see. Like, we got there and it was packed! And I… I had no idea what to anticipate, but it went so well. It’s so wonderful. It was nice for the community to be able to do something like this. And coming back to what you said about the bell choir, I love bell choirs. Just, in particular, they evoke a kind of nostalgia for me. I played the bells once for an elementary school concert, and… I have a lot of respect for people in bell choirs, because oh my goodness. So no, good on the Brunswick Street Baptist Church Handbell Choir. They did a good job with the songs that they helped with.


ANGUS: They absolutely did. One thing that I really loved about the concert was the amount of community that was on display. It feels like, since Covid started and everything, there haven’t really been any huge community events where the Fredericton community can really get together and just show how great we are. It was really wonderful to see that. I actually have a couple of comments here from parents that I was interviewing that I was there.


SOPHIA: Sure, let’s hear some.


ANGUS: [What] one parent had to say about is following. This was regarding how quickly this all came together, and I mentioned how incredible it was that the children were performing this well in such a short period of time, and he had the following to say:


“It shows that somebody is really planning and preparing, really working behind the scenes and umm probably we don't know the half of it as far as what they do… My Daughter is with the Ross Simonds choir for voice lessons and so on and so it's a really good opportunity for her to do something public to present something to a whole audience ”


I think that last part especially, the part about doing something publicly and presenting to an audience is so important, because these past couple of years kids really haven’t had the chance to be a part of their communities in that capacity. I know personally—and I’m in high school—I’ve certainly had a harder time just readjusting to social norms and whatnot, so for younger kids it must be much, much harder, and it’s really great that their starting to get these opportunities again to really show off, show to the world that they’re talented. [That] they can do things, and it’s so good for their confidence and whatnot going forward, and I think that’s just so important.


SOPHIA: Definitely. Like, my—you know this—my little sister, she’s in elementary school and she went. And it was wonderful for me to know that she was there watching this, because that showed her that events like this do happen. Because she was 5 when Covid hit at its hardest, and so she didn’t have opportunities to go see things like this, whereas when I was younger and when you were younger, this was a lot more common. Although I will say, apparently, according to one of the members I was talking to, [while Fredericton] really is an arts-oriented city, this is the first youth choir in the city in over a decade.


ANGUS: Over a decade? Wow.


SOPHIA: Yeah. So even before Covid this would’ve been really quite something.


Also, going back to community, I also talked to one of the parents and she had a really interesting perspective as she mentioned how she’s really picky, she’s a total perfectionist, and she’s also an immigrant from China, and [so] she knew how important it was for her children to get involved, especially with the pandemic, just because she wanted [them] to become entrenched in the community. And my mum is from Perth Andover, which is very much not as far as China, but she even mentioned that to get involved in the community in Fredericton does take a little extra work. So it was really interesting for her to say that “this is one thing that I did choose for my child to participate in,” and she could not be more overjoyed. She thinks that Ross Simonds and the rest of the crew just did such a good job. [In her words,] everything was managed super well, super professionally, on task, and that the kids have the opportunity to do this is really quite special.


ANGUS: Absolutely. It’s really a great opportunity for people to become a deeper part of the community and, as someone who moved to Fredericton relatively recently myself, I can speak to the fact that it can be hard sometimes to really… penetrate, sort of, the “Fredericton bubble”—to really feel like you’re part of that community. I’m just so happy that people have the opportunity to that here with organisations like the Kiwanis Youth Choir.


SOPHIA: Of course, no… it’s really incredible.


So you mentioned that you talked with, or you interviewed, some parents—I also did, but who else did you talk to, if you had any other interviews?


ANGUS: Well, another woman I spoke to, she mentioned that she first joined choral, started getting involved in choirs, when she was in the 5th grade, and she found it to be a very formative experience, so, to have all three of her kids in the choir was a really big deal. She was quite happy with just how professionally it was all run, how much the children were learning, like, just on top of how wonderful it is for them to have the experience to get out in the community. Like, children are really learning a lot through this choir, and she was just glad that they were capable of having such incredible, formative experiences right here in Fredericton. She said she thought that that was so important, and so do I. I think that’s so important.


SOPHIA: Mhm, for sure.


ANGUS: Was there anyone…?


SOPHIA: Else? I talked to a few more of the students, and [there is] one that I just think is very wholesome and nice. I asked them, “After the pandemic and everything that involved, what does this mean for you to be a part of this?”, and they answer was just really wholesome. One of the students I talked to said,


“I guess it just means we get to sing again. And as we haven’t been able to for so long… it just makes me happy. It makes other people happy. Singing, along with Covid, it just wasn’t as fun.”


ANGUS: No, it wasn’t. And that’s really what this is all about. It’s all about a community that’s coming back together after a period of hardship, and really getting back out there and coming back together, and it’s so great to see that. In the world that we live in, where everything seems to be getting worse in a lot of way…


SOPHIA: Very negative, very negative indeed.


[SOPHIA laughs]


ANGUS: Yes. It’s very important that we hold on to events like this and organisations like the Kiwanis Youth Choir, and that we appreciate the small things and the really, deeply impactful things like this that really affect our communities personally, and really have an important impact on them.


SOPHIA: Yes, though as you said, it is small, but it really did have an impact.


ANGUS: It did!


SOPHIA: Like, I have thought about it since going to see it. The whole experience.


ANGUS: So have I, so have I. Like we said, it was very well put together. I think that’s the end of our time for today.


SOPHIA: Aw, looks like it. I will say, people, please, if you have the time, look into the Kiwanis Youth Choir—it really is worth your time. I’m certain that they’ll be doing other shows later on, probably a few months from now. But they actually are also looking for new members, so [we] can leave information [below] to let you know about that if you’re interested.


ANGUS: Yes, the information for how to join or how to go see their shows, that should be on down in the dubilee-due of whatever medium this is.


SOPHIA: Well, thank you for listening!


ANGUS: Yes, thank you for tuning in to Katching Up. We’ll see you again later… sometime, FHS.


SOPHIA: Ciao for now!


ANGUS: Ciao!


[NOTE! As of now, the information has not been provided for the Kiwanis Youth Choir. When provided, it will replace this note. Apologies for the inconvenience.]


A look at the performance and venue, photographed by Angus McDonell.

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