Catch young local choir on national television tonight

Sunday 11 December 2016

You can see a young local choir in full voice on national television tonight as they sung to put Jersey on the choral map, competing in the National Choir of the Year 2016.

Judges were reduced to tears when the Musical Originals Training Choir, made up of girls and boys as young as seven, took to the stage in the huge Millennium Centre in Cardiff.

The young choir is led by former professional Opera Singer Imogen Nicholls and was among about 200 choirs who had battled it out in auditions across the country to make it to the 'X'factor style' final where they performed in front of thousands.

Ms Nicolls said: "The children in the choir had given up six hours each weekend over the last five weeks to learn three new difficult songs which would tax many an adult choir. They performed these to perfection, without accompaniment and some of the children are just seven-years-old!

"It is a huge venue but the children rose splendidly to the occasion and sung magnificently in the actual competition. They performed 'HomeTime' by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies - hugely appreciated by the chairman of the judges, Harry Christophers, 'Two For the Price of One' arranged by Andrew Carter and 'Prayer for the Children' by Kurt Bestor.

"When we had finished singing, two of the judges, ESKA and Danielle de Niese who is a world renowned opera singer, were both tears and had to take a moment before they could comment in the microphones. ESKA came to find me afterwards and asked if she could move to Jersey so that her daughter could join our choir! Danielle de Niese said to me that she had never heard children sing with such maturity of line and vocal technique and she was welling up just thinking about their performance."

Ms Nicolls said it looked like they were in the running to win until an adult choir from Newcastle called "Voices for Hope' took to the stage and blew everyone away.

You can see the choir in action tonight on BBC 4 at 20:00.