If you hear the faint sound of children singing on the evening wind, the next few nights, it is likely blowing across the city from Vanier Hall.
The school district's Singfest Committee presents the annual city-wide choral singing extravaganza they call Christmas Nights of Music, on tonight, Tuesday and Wednesday. Sixteen choirs from 11 elementary schools will present songs over these next three nights, including Quesnel's Correlieu Secondary School coming to take part and the region's District 57 Tapestry Singers.
"That's up by two or three choirs from last year," said committee spokesperson Paul Mulligan. "The state of school choirs is doing quite well. Parents love it, kids love it, and a lot of choirs are a lunchtime thing or after school thing, doing it as a club, an extracurricular activity. Some schools have enough kids for a split, a junior and a senior choir, and a few have a full-time music teacher."
Mulligan teaches a Grade 4-5 class at Heather Park Elementary School, and has 53 kids meet with him at lunchtime to work on the choir. That is up from 35 kids the year before and, he said, "the first thing they asked me at the start of the year was 'do we get to sing at Vanier Hall?' because they love that experience."
Mulligan said having the dedicated district-wide District 57 Tapestry Singers, and the high school singers from Quesnel make the tip up are both helpful inclusions, because it shows the "club choir" singers what all they can aspire to.
Each night's program starts at 7 p.m.
