'MEC Press' March School News Publication 2020 | Page 10

Maynooth Eduction Campus Choir
& Sing Ireland
T his year, the Maynooth
Education Campus Choir had
the honour of being chosen for
a very special job. ‘Sing
Ireland’
were
holding
auditions to find a new
conductor for the Irish Youth
Training Choir and they
wanted us to be the choir they
used for the auditions. Ms.
Dollard immediately accepted
this request, knowing we were
always willing to take up any
opportunity of singing that
came our way.
The auditions were held on the
6 th February 2020. 4 very
nervous auditionees arrived at
the school as did the 6 judges
who would be auditioning
them. We were all very
excited as we waited for the
auditions to begin. Not only
did we get to be a part of
something so big but we also
got to miss almost a full dayof
school which I think was a
huge bonus for a lot of us.
The auditions started at around
10am with each auditionee
getting 30 minutes to conduct
a rehearsal with us and prove
to the panel of six judges that
they should be the one getting
the job. We all did our best to
help each conductor as much
as we could, listening and
responding to everything they
were saying and hopefully
making the whole process
easier for them. Once all 4
conductors had auditioned, the
judges turned to us to ask our
opinion of which we thought
about each individual.
Not only did we get to help
‘Sing Ireland’ in making such
an important choice, we
ourselves also learnt a lot from
this experience. We all
thoroughly enjoyed working
with different conductors and
being exposed to different
conducting and singing styles
and techniques. We took a lot
away from these amazing
conductors and have definitely
been using what we had learnt
in our own rehearsals.
This experience was one we
will
never
forget
and
hopefully we will be able to do
more things like this in the
near future.
The Board of Sing Ireland
has appointed Bernie
Sherlock
as
Artistic
Director of the Irish
Youth Choirs and Patrick
Barrett as Conductor of
the Irish Youth Training
Choir.
On behalf of the Maynooth
Education Campus Choir we
would like to congratulate
Patrick Barrett on his
appointment and thank him for
the great training we got in the
school. We wish him every
success