North Sydney Community Centre Choir
Meets Mondays 7.30pm to 9pm
North Sydney Community Centre 220 Miller St, North Sydney
North Sydney Community Centre runs a wide variety of courses and leisure activities including a Monday night choir. Each term focuses on a different theme or songwriter, and the course is designed to suit the least experienced singer and also provide challenges for those who want to sing harmonies and sing solo. I currently run the choir in Terms 2 and 3 each year. Check NSCC’s site for details. What students have said: “It’s the highlight of my week.”, “It kept me sane during the pandemic.”, “It’s like a party every week.”
W: Northsydneycentre.com.au
CONVerge
CONverge is an annual program run by The Smith Family in conjunction with the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and supported by Westpac. In the third term of each year we conduct weekly singing workshops in high schools in South-Western Sydney in The Smith Family’s Lifelong Learning program. We work intensively with students and bring participating schools together to culminate in a combined a cappella concert at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music’s Verbruggen Hall. It’s a wonderful project to work with students from the ground up to come up a full performance program that always includes a couple of combined songs.
Bespoke workshops, one-offs, adventures and online choirs
Got an idea for a workshop? I specialise in working with mixed groups - people from all walks of life who want to sing and connect. I love to bring songs to people that connect them to local places, cultures and histories. I gladly run one-off special workshops, workplace choirs, regular groups and combine travelling to new places and songs. I have written new songs for all kinds of projects in all kinds of places and can work solo or with groups to create new music. I sing with trio The Third Voice and together we conduct all manner of singing workshops including on the unique sound of Afro-Cuban songs. Past miscellaneous choir events I have run include: Sing Cockatoo (on Cockatoo Island); Sing Dubbo; Sing Canowindra; choir for festivals in Forbes, the National Folk Festival, Cobargo Folk Festival; Singing in Cuba with Cuban choirs (in conjunction with Cuban Adventures); Choir on a Wire (the songs of Leonard Cohen, for North Sydney Community Centre); workshops for Wollemi Commons, Voices from the Waters, Randwick Community Garden, St George Community Housing, St Pius Primary School, Scales of Justice (Legal Aid choir), The Hellenic Choir, Songs From Next Door, Choir Rocks, With One Voice, St Albans Choir, Sydney Trade Union Choir, and many more. In a past life I ran workshops around the country and overseas with Blindman's Holiday as part of Musica Viva's touring programs. I don't have favourites, but a highlight has definitely been forming a massed choir at the 2010 National Folk Festival - the culmination of working on a National Folk Fellowship. The choir performed a program of new arrangements of songs I unearthed in the National Library of Australia's Oral History and Folklore Archive. One of the songs we performed was by (and with) Uncle Ronnie and Aunty Dyan Summers - Songlines of the Moonbird. 0410682061 christinamsings@gmail.com