by Author Paul Wilson

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What was your best music education experience in January?

For me, the best event of January has to be a teachers' training session on boys and singing.

Torbay Music Service asked Wren Music to put together a training day as part of Singing Around The Bay, a larger project involving 15 schools. Although approaching the idea with enthusiasm [as ever!], we were nervous as to how the whole thing would play out.

So we mixed it up, adding a local shanty group Mariners Away, our countywide youth folk choir Roots A Capella and singing leaders Matt Norman and Sarah Owen to the training session with teachers, singing leaders and young people aged 10 – 16 from schools right across Torbay.

Warmups, performances, participatory singing for all 120 people who came, tea, cake, small focus groups all went by and we finished with a great presentation on the chosen theme by Dr. Martin Ashley featuring live boys as demonstration models – (very courageous) which brought a lightness that is hard to describe.

This day was good for so many reasons, but a particular triumph was that the different worlds met positively. We lifted the confidence of young male singers and shared with teachers not only the technical side of changing young male voices, but the relevance and power of the folk song repertoire.

Some of the 10 year old boys took the songs straight back to their schools and rumour has it, insisted on singing them in assemblies. Mariners Away (the shanty group) are now actively considering how many school bookings they can cope with. The buzz is living on right across the bay and beyond.

Whether this momentum will continue through to the big Singing Around The Bay finale on Thursday 1st March in Torbay’s largest venue The Riviera International Conference Centre, it remains to be seen. We have high, high hopes.

www.wrenmusic.co.uk