Most people can't carry a tune in a bucket but one voice teacher has helped a local choral group reach those elusive high notes to showcase award-winning talent.
Robin Norman was recently recognized as an Outstanding Volunteer for the City of Prince George mostly for her efforts in creating and directing Nove Voce Choral Society, which has outgrown its Latin name which literally translates to 'nine voices'. Right now there's 28 members in the all-women's choir.
"It was a pretty spectacular group of nine young women who have all gone on to do great things," Norman said about the first members of the society.
Each year the choir has grown by a couple of people as schedules get busier. That way certain choir members can meet an obligation while others take on another, Norman added. Smaller choirs don't have the same dynamics or range of expression as a bigger one, she noted.
"Adding a few more voices made us more competitive," Norman said, who was constantly getting requests from community members to join Nove Voce, whose mandate is to pursue excellence.
The choir started out as a group of young ladies who wanted to sing in public as a group. Norman thought the ideal way to do that would be to volunteer for the Salvation Army Kettle campaign in 2005, bringing their musical talent into Pine Centre Mall to attract donors to the cause. It was a win-win situation. From there the group participated in the local Music Festival in 2006 and through their success they were runner-up in the province for their efforts and decided to move forward and develop the group.
"We were better than we thought," Norman laughed. "Who knew we were that good?"
The next year Nove Voce won the provincials and went on to compete in the national competition.
"And it's kind of been all over the place from there," Norman said, who's been a voice teacher for 22 years.
"The beautiful thing is that because it started with voice students, it wasn't a huge challenge for me because I knew all of them, I worked with all of them and then we opened it up to the public and we said anyone could audition and people came back to choir."
There were local choral singers who brought their talents to Nove Voce, while others moved to Prince George from all over the country who were looking for a place to share their talents and that's how the society grew to the current membership of 28.
Nove Voce gambled a bit with the music they performed, Norman said.
"There's lots of beautiful, beautiful music out there that people have heard a lot but one of the things I really wanted to do if we were going to start a choir was to make sure part of our mandate was to perform pieces from Canadian composers," she added. "That inherently meant that it was more modern works and to compete with those pieces they tended to be a little bit different."
Tobin Stokes from Powell River composed a Basque witch chant that Nove Voce performed earlier this year.
"And we thought OK this was a little bit different," Norman said. "How are we going to approach it, what are we going to do?"
Norman said their other mandate is unofficial and it's to use music created by female composers. Works by Newfoundland's Kathleen Allan and Allison Girvan, who grew up in Red Rock, are part of the Nove Voce repertoire.
"It's always great to have a Mozart on a program - everybody loves Mozart - there's no harm there but you can always throw in a Fanny Mendelssohn, too, right?" Norman said about the German pianist and composer, born in 1805, who created more than 460 pieces.
The volunteer effort it takes to keep Nove Voce at its peak sees Norman investing about four days a week because different parts of the choir rehearses on different nights and then there's a mass rehearsal, too. There's the administration side of it, as well where Norman is answering calls, booking jobs and searching for and compiling music for an event's program.
"So it's probably about 10 hours a week, which has been a pretty solid part-time job," Norman laughed. "There's always times where it's not that much work at all - once I get it programmed and it's good to go then I just breeze into rehearsal - and that can be very easy. But then there are a lot of times where it's like OK, I have to get this work done and we have to get posters out and we have to get press and all those things can be daunting and time consuming and yeah."
Over time Nove Voce, which was awarded best overall choir in the province and took third place at nationals last year, has become more well known in the community and garnered pretty amazing sponsors, Norman added.
Even other choral directors came forward to offer support. Rose Loewen, founder of Bel Canto Choir and Alex Murray, Judy Russell's dad and former choral director in Vancouver before he moved to Prince George, came to support Nove Voce by donating music they had that was suitable for choirs.
Choirs were always part of Norman's world growing up and so she felt inspired to see those ensemble singers succeed and decided that she could do it, too.
"I probably shouldn't have thought that but I did anyway," Norman said, who is also past president of Performing Arts B.C. and vice president of the Federation of Canadian Music Festivals.
Norman said as she looks back on her life both her parents, John and Ellen Norman, were enthusiastic volunteers.
"I can remember growing up and dad was the president of the old art gallery and they were trying to raise money for Two Rivers," Norman said. "He would make me come out - I remember I was foul about it, I'm sure - he made me come out and check coats at a gallery fundraiser. It was a never a question of if you were going to volunteer for something - you just did. Growing up with that kind of community was just a part of our life."
Flip through The Citizen's Volunteer City series, featuring stand-out volunteers in Prince George:
