It’s a weekday evening at St Hilda’s Collegiate. The chat among the teens filing into the school’s hall offers an upbeat note, offset by a pianist working her way through aspects of a repertoire they will soon embrace as one. That is, after all, the point of a choir.
The glass doors open and close time and again, contributing to a fluctuation in background volume, a soft-louder-soft cadence not unlike the voices of a quartet of girls who, perched on a bench outside, are ruminating on The Big Sing, the national secondary schools choral festival that culminated in Dunedin on Saturday.
Having progressed from the regional round in June, the 30-member St Hilda’s Collegiate Madrigal Choir is the only Dunedin group to reach the finale of a competition which, in its opening rounds, involved 10,000 singers from 645 schools before being whittled down to 24 choirs comprising 920 singers, accompanists and musical directors.
The Big Sing might be a contest, yet there are greater rewards to be gained from being involved in such an event, Jamie MacKenzie, Holly Armstrong, Sophie O’Driscoll and Lola Garden (all 17) suggest.
"We have made great friendships from it," Lola says, before Jamie reflects on a growing confidence: "Singing in a choir has definitely helped. I used to cry a lot because of nerves. I don’t any more. I think I’ve come a long way."
Holly: "We all do sports and stuff and it feels a bit like training. You put in the time and effort ... "
The girls all agree: being part of a group is an empowering and beneficial experience. They aren’t alone in that observation.
According to a 2013 Oxford Brookes University study, joining a choir improves wellbeing, both through the implicit act of singing as well as the social connections forged within a group activity.
Other studies claim joining a choir could ease the symptoms of Parkinson’s, depression and lung disease.
Research has also suggested singing increases oxygen levels in the blood and triggers the release of endorphins and oxytocin, a hormone associated with "happiness", lowering stress levels and blood pressure.
Researchers at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg have even found that choristers’ heartbeats synchronise when they combine their voices, resulting in a calming effect similar to the benefits gained from breathing techniques learned in yoga.
According to a report published in the Journal of Music Therapy, singing helps patients cope with chronic pain; a joint study by Harvard and Yale universities claims choral singing increased the life expectancy of some residents in a Connecticut town; another study attempts to make the case that the pleasure derived from singing together is an evolutionary reward for co-operation.
And it’s not only good singers who benefit from making themselves heard.
One study shows group singing can lead to "satisfying and therapeutic sensations even when the sound produced by the vocal instrument is of mediocre quality".
Judy Bellingham doesn’t typically deal with people who possess mediocre voices, yet the respected Dunedin singing tutor doesn’t always deal with great voices, either.
"I like to take people who have a basically good voice. But I don’t mind if they haven’t been taught before. Very often, they are easier to teach," the associate professor in voice at the University of Otago says.
Life-changing potential
Recently awarded an MNZM for services to classical singing, Prof Bellingham has been involved in music for 50 years, including as an opera singer and music teacher.
She has inspired thousands of young New Zealand singers, been a vocal coach and board member for the New Zealand Youth Choir as well as offered guidance and mentoring as an adjudicator for The Big Sing.
She emphasises it’s not her role to teach singers to reach the notes. Rather, she teaches them how to interpret and inhabit the material. Sometimes that involves people being less critical of themselves.
"If students are critiquing themselves while they perform, well, who is actually performing? Some singers are harder to teach because they are always clinically analysing what they are doing, rather than just letting go and letting the emotions take over."
Prof Bellingham also discourages imitation. Parroting others is no way to fulfil vocal potential, she says.
"I don’t like my students listening to someone else sing a song — say, on You Tube — before I have taught it to them, because they are likely to inhabit that person’s interpretation of it."
New Zealand Secondary Schools Choir music director Andrew Withington is another who knows full well the joys and challenges of singing in public.
"I see singing and choral music as a medium in which we can learn a lot of life skills, such as leadership, reliability, responsibility, empathy, connection, collaboration ... all those values are reinforced in a choral setting."
Withington, who led the national schools choir in a free public performance at the Dunedin Town Hall on Saturday afternoon in the build-up to a gala concert that night, says The Big Sing is a ‘‘wonderful’’ opportunity for secondary school singers to share the art of choral music with one another.
"They get to hear the best choirs in the country — and that includes the New Zealand Secondary Schools Choir, which is something they might aspire to."
Although The Big Sing might mark the end of a chapter for some — in particular, year 13 pupils who will leave school at the end of the year — it is also a launching pad for others: auditions for the New Zealand Secondary Schools Choir will be held over the next two months, as will auditions for the New Zealand Youth Choir, which offers an outlet for a slightly older cohort.
"Lifelong friendships can be formed in the 18 months people typically spend in the secondary schools choir. It becomes a family and that feeling is part of the reason why many people want to continue choral singing as they get older."
Withington (37) is living, singing proof of the life-changing potential of music.
"I’ve had a career in music for 20 years, ever since I left school. I sang in The Big Sing and got inspired by listening to other choirs. It helped foster my love for singing and conducting, which led to me studying choral music."
Appointed musical director of the New Zealand Secondary Schools Choir in 2008, Withington has taken the group to Canada, South Africa, Singapore and Malaysia; he has sung tenor and bass in the Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir and in the New Zealand Youth Choir and is in high demand as a choral conductor, adjudicator and clinician.
Now he is studying towards a doctorate in choral pedagogy at the University of Canterbury.
"I’ve been able to travel the world, singing and conducting. It’s a pretty good life," he reflects.
"Choral music has benefits beyond music. There are holistic results as people develop and learn transferable skills.
"Some students might be big fish in a small pond, but when they come together with a bunch of like-minded — and talented — people, they quickly realise that it’s about the team.
"Sometimes we get singers as young as 14 enter the national schools choir and they leave at 18, because they have done two cycles with us. You see massive changes in them, not only vocally but also in terms of their maturity," Withington says.
"There is an increase in confidence. Some people come into the choir really tentative but, by the time they leave, they are equipped for the future."
Back at the St Hilda’s hall, the excitement of competing in a national final is modulated by other teen dynamics.
Says Sophie: "I think people might think of choir as being geeky, but when people actually hear a good choir, they change their minds."
The others nod in harmonious unison.
