But the old songs live on …
Inter-Mennonite Children’s Choir celebrates 50 years of inspiring young singers
WATERLOO — When Sarah Martin was a child, she came home from choir practice with sheet music and spent hours singing and banging away at the family piano.
These days, her nine-year-old daughter, Emma, just pops a CD into the computer to rehearse her tunes.
The technology may have changed since Sarah sang with the Inter-Mennonite Children’s Choir, but the songs have stayed the same.
“You shall have a song” is one of them. It’s Emma’s favourite choir tune and Sarah remembers singing it, too.
On May 7, the two of them will get to croon that classic tune together.
The Inter-Mennonite Children’s Choir is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a special concert that will bring former choir members, now adults, together with children now in the choir.
For this mother-daughter duo, the timing couldn’t be more perfect.
“I remember singing at the 25th anniversary concert,” Sarah said. “It’s neat that my daughter gets to experience this one.”
The choir was started by a Conrad Grebel University College professor in the ’70s for children from different Mennonite groups. It is now open to everyone and accepts children between six and 14 years old.
At a rehearsal on Tuesday, children were perched in plastic seats inside a gym at W-K Mennonite Church in Waterloo. They watched intently as choir conductor Carolyn Neumann VanderBurgh raised her arms and shaped her mouth into an oval.
She said she loves watching the children respond to each sweeping gesture of her hand.
“It’s like painting a picture with sound,” she added.
The children were rehearsing for the anniversary concert that will also end this choir season. Neumann VanderBurgh said she tells the children little historical tidbits and shows them old photos of choirs past and the retro uniforms choristers once wore.
“Kids have no sense of what 50 years is,” Neumann VanderBurgh pointed out. It’s her way of expressing how long this particular choir has been around, inspiring a passion for singing.
On Tuesday the children get excited as they sing and dance to the upbeat Hebrew hymn “Hine Ma Tov.”
Even older kids sprawled in the hallway outside the gym perked up at the sound of it. It was a song they all know well.
For many children like Emma, the choir is a place to not only express a passion for music but to also grow as a singer.
“I love singing and it makes me really happy,” Emma said.
Sarah pipes in to say she has watched proudly as her daughter learned how to read music and turned into a confident but modest performer over the past three years in the choir.
“I think she really takes joy in it,” she added.
Sarah loves to sing, too. Their family is usually the one belting out perfectly in-tune songs around the fire when they go camping.
For Sarah, it all started with the children’s choir.
“The choir was a place I felt like I belonged,” she said.
She made lifelong friendships over the 10 years she sang in unison with other boys and girls.
In Sarah’s day, the choir accepted children up until the age of 16. Her memories, like those of many other choir alumni, include fun practices, catching up with choir friends and field trips. “We were like a family.” Inter-Mennonite Children’s Choir 50th anniversary concert is on Sunday at 3 p.m.
St. Matthews Lutheran Church, 54 Benton St., Kitchener
Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for children over five years old
Information: www.mennosingers.com/imcc/.