Month: September 2014

It’s that time of year again!

Most workplaces have access to some kind of ‘workplace giving’ program, where you can pledge a specific amount to charity, which is then taken off your paycheque regularly.

Yes – you can donate to Amabile Choirs through that program!

Most workplace giving forms allow you to direct your pledge to a specific registered charity. You’ll likely find the designation information on the reverse side of the form. Simply direct your pledge to Amabile Choirs of London, Canada (that’s our official name) and you’re done!

Your gift to Amabile Choirs will provide sheet music, rehearsal & performance venues, touring & performance support and world-class music education for youth across Southwestern Ontario, who love to sing!

Thanks you for letting their voices soar!

Amabile is an Italian word that simply means “friendly”… and it’s really how Amabile began. At the end of the 1985 London Kiwanis Music Festival, local music teachers Brenda Zadorsky and John Barron took their respective choral groups – who had competed against each other – for ice cream at what is now known as Cherryhill Village Mall, to celebrate. The 27 girls with cones in hand, wandered onto a set of risers and just for fun, this impromptu group sang. The voices blended beautifully, and that fall, Amabile Youth Singers were born.

The story as confirmed by the mom of two of our choristers (who was one of the 27 singers) goes that the song they sang was the competition piece – in Polish. A family of new Canadians who had emigrated from Poland happened to be wandering through the mall, with Grandma who had come for a visit. In a faraway land with signs that she couldn’t read, she happened across 27 girls singing a folk song that she grew up singing…. And she stood, captivated, with tears streaming down her face.

That spur-of-the-moment performance 30 years ago after an ice cream celebration, laid the foundation for what is now, almost 300 choristers in eight different choirs – boys and girls, from age 8 to adults, who sing in a myriad of different languages – including Polish.

Amabile Alumni Andrew Haji, now living in Toronto as a member of the Canadian Opera Company ensemble studio scored big in the Netherlands.

Over the weekend, he was named the recipient of the Grand Prix, the Press Prize, and the Junior Jury Prize at the 50th edition of the International Vocal Competition ’s-Hertogenbosch (IVC). It has been the sole international competition for classical singing in the Netherlands since 1954, with more than 200 candidates from over 40 countries competing this year.

Andrew has also been studying with another London-native: Darryl Edwards at the University of Toronto and at Edwards’ COSI program in Italy.

Interestingly, Haji created the original Amabile webpage while he was a student at Banting, and was on his way to Waterloo to study Computer Science when, as Free Press Arts star James Reaney put it, “his inner tenor won out.”

Read the London Free Press story here http://bit.ly/1yhcyqt
…with more on the competitions Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/InternationalVocalCompetition