Rehearsals have been under way for weeks as local students and community members prepare to wow audiences at FCJ College’s annual Let’s Find Our Voice concert.
The popular program has now been running for almost a decade and is a highlight of the Year 7 curriculum with student eager to take part.
The 2023 concert will feature all Year 7 students who will be singing away on stage with local community members.
Let’s Find Our Voice began as a collaboration with Cooinda Aged Care and its important component was, and still is, the involvement of Year 10 students who write memoirs of the older participants.
FCJ music teacher Adam Toms said COVID affected the way the program was delivered, but as a result even more older local people had become involved.
“Cooinda wanted to get on board again but unfortunately COVID restrictions have made it difficult,” Mr Toms said
“So we decided to open it up to the community and found a lot of enthusiastic local folk to help out.”
Fellow FCJ teacher Catherine Burton is also heavily involved and said the connection students made with older community members made it all worthwhile.
“Last time we wrote about Ray O’Shannassy who was 90 years old. He’s our oldest choir member now at 91 and he is just fantastic.
“We also have memoirs written about some of the choir members and they’re presented at the performance as well.”
The students love the connections too.
“It’s good meeting the older people, they have really good stories,” Dion said.
Lucy said singing with them was very interesting.
When asked how they deal with the nerves they all agreed.
“We take it all out on our siblings,” they said in unison.
There will be two performances. One is during the day, which will be mainly students from primary school. Then the evening performance begins at 7pm. Both are on June 8 at the the Marie Madeline Centre,which is the school’s multi-purpose hall on Arundel St.
If you’d like to be in the audience you can contact the school on 5762 1222. Tickets are $10 for adults and children are free. More information is available on its Facebook page @FCJ College.