From the depths of despair....the phoenix rises!

In this week's blog post we thought we would begin with a bit of background on our great adventure. Our church, Metropolitan United Church in London, Ontario, Canada, is one of our country's most storied congregations. We are one of The United Church of Canada's 'cathedral' churches and we have always had a tradition of excellent music. 'Met' is the kind of church that one comes to and stays. Built in 1897, Metropolitan has only had had seven organists in its history, so it is a pretty splendid place to work. With this said, in spite of always having a superb professional quality adult choir, there is absolutely no tradition of children's music at Met. Sure, we have had our share of Junior Choirs over the years, but no one ever took these very seriously. 

​This all changed eight years ago, when our new Senior Minister suggested that we might want to think about beginning a music and arts program for children in the area. After a summer of planning, the Metropolitan Church Arts and Music Program, or mCAMP as it came to be known, was born. (mCAMP still exists today and is distinct from the Metropolitan United Church Choir School, which will be speaking about in this blog. You can read more about mCAMP by clicking the following link: mcamp.org) The new program was open to all interested children between the ages of six and seventeen and included a choir component. The mCAMP choir was informally referred to as 'The Choristers' and we did our very best to encourage our participants to sing at our Sunday morning service once a month.

​However, it was difficult to get parents in an informal program to commit regularly to attending the Sunday morning services of a church that they did not belong too. In spite of having a 'choir' of roughly twenty singers, we rarely had more than ten on any given Sunday. We tried everything we could think of to generate interest! We took trips to Montreal and Toronto, we brought in visiting clinicians and held summer camps. No matter what we did we simply could not muster commitment on the part of families, and worse than this, no one seemed to see the choir as anything other than 'cute' and relatively 'unnecessary!

It was on our trip to Montreal that the seeds of our current Choir School were sown. This happened after a particularly discouraging day. As part of our time in Montreal, the choir participated in a Music Festival. During the adjudication after our performance, two of our choristers, who were tired, laid down on the stage and 'took a nap' while the adjudicator spoke! In just seconds, both of us realized that this was never going to work and that the dream of building a children's choir that performed at a high level was clearly not going to happen. We left the festival depressed and disheartened. 

The rest of the day faded in a haze of melancholy, and then somewhere around 945 there was a knock on my hotel room door. Three of our older choristers were in the hall and they asked if we could meet in Catherine's room in ten minutes. I had no idea what they were going to say, fearing the worst. We all gathered and then the most remarkable thing happened! The girls were very upset by what had happened that day - none of them had been among the nappers! - and they had a question. We took a deep breath. "Would it be possible to start a choir that was very serious, with  people who all really cared about singing and wanted to be there?" We sat silently for a moment and then....snatched from the jaws of defeat, we agreed that it seemed like a very, very good idea to us!

But as we would quickly learn, it was easier said than done...