Listening to children sing is one of life’s pleasures. Who doesn’t love to listen to our choir singing on occasions and who is not delighted when the opportunity comes for our whole school to provide the chorus? These occasions can count the boys in their tens. If one is lucky enough to attend a senior school event then maybe one can count the singers in the hundreds. Well imagine being at an event where the singers are counted in the thousands! Many of the parents of our choir where lucky enough to listen to almost eight thousand children singing – 7,981 to be precise, and this included 42 of our own Buckingham Prep choir.
This world leading event took place at the O2 Centre on the Bank of the River Thames, on the evening of 6th February.
We arrived just after lunchtime amid the sea of thousands of other school children all ready to practise for the afternoon. Throughout the afternoon the boys rehearsed songs and dances ready to perform later for an audience of several thousand more, which included their own parents. The performance included not only singing but some dancing and stage shows too. The show lasted some 2 hours although the afternoon’s rehearsal took considerably longer. Getting near on 8,000 voices to be in tune and on time is no easy task.
“Young Voices”, which is a charitable organisation, stages the largest children’s choir concerts in the world. All funds raised from the evening’s event went to aid the Teenage Cancer Trust, an extremely worthy cause, I am sure you will agree. I am in no doubt that every boy, parent and staff member who attended will remember this occasion for the rest of their lives and as you can see from just some of the quotes from the evening which we have narrated above, the day and evening were very well worth attending.
Categories: School News
