Feeling rather bored, i decided to post up abit of Kranji Choir's History ( as far as i remember and from my point of view ) here to maybe interest some of the sec 1s and sec 2s our History.
This is a personal recount of mine, i decided to make this blog NOT SO FORMAL anymore.
In year 2004, joined the Choir ( sec 1 ) after a while inside, i pulled and persuaded two rather wellknown people in the choir right now into the choir. Cheehow and Chongren . xD
In June-July 2004, Kranji choir had a voice recording at Singapore Poly, bad experince. Choir did very badly.
So we were left pretty stagnant doing nothing productive until in November when Mrs Lim Yau left the choir suddenly and without a word.This has caused a few kranji choir members to habour resentment against her because she just left us on our own with SYF comming up in a short time without any preparation done.
Mr Francis Liew joined the Kranji Choir accepting a challenge that most conductors will not take, that is to teach kranji choir the SYF songs within 4 months.
So as mentioned in early post, this songs are Sunset, Exultate Justi and Muyang Guniang. To help you all understand why this task is no mean feat, most of other choir should have already finished their two songs and polished them and have already completed the SET piece and is already starting to polish them.
So under very tight scheldue, Kranji choir worked together as a team achieving full attendance almost every practice. Honestly, the seniors and us really worked our S off. Also pity the sec1s then ( Yee Gin, Huisian, Germain, Jia Xuan, Calvin, Tricia , Gabrielle), just came into the choir and was sucked into our insane training scheldue.
We came back for official practice twice a week including saturdays and conducted Sectionals almost every morning before morning assembly. The Sections will come down at 6.45am and sing until 7.15am when morning assembly starts.
Our SYF was on the 1st of April, 4 pm ( i still remember ). The Choir was to leave class at 9 oclock ( very early considering the fact that we only need to sing at 4.00 pm ) and we sang and did last minute work from 9 to 11 pm. Then, the choir took an hour nap in the Music room ( i still remember how freezing cold it was, and most people did sleep ) till 12 oclock and started making up from 12 to 1 after having our lunch inbetween.
During this two hours, Mr Liew went over to Unity sec to prepare them for their SYF since their syf was a few days after ours.
Somewhere during 1 oclock, while we were taking pictures and just slacking around after finishing the make up and waiting for Mr Liew to return, Mdm Maureen Lee came in and gave us our final encouragement.
We did our final warm up from 2 onwards and left for Singapore Conference Hall. There were two buses to ferry us there and one of the bus was slightly late, about 20 minutes.
I remember in the bus trip, no one was supposed to talk at all or be removed from the SYF immediately so the bus trip was really silent ( after warming up , talking in the cold air con air of the bus will simply waste all the warming up you had. )
After alighting the bus, we were rushed into the warm up room ( everything was in a rush because we were late ) The choir was alittle shaken then and in the warm up room, we just sang through some of the starting and ending. And up we went to the backstage to prepare.
Anyway, we sang and came down. When the result was announced, kranji choir was pretty much dissapointed and there were no cheers coming from us. A stark contrast to some other choirs who cheered and screamed and shouted upon receiving the silver award.
Then again, kranji choir was left pretty much stagnant until July 2005. With one month to prepare for the Kranji 10th Anniversary which is on the 13th of August 2005, we rushed again.
It was during this time kranji choir really bonded because there were alot of waiting time involved over at NTU Auditorium since it wasnt only the choir singing. We were there from 8 oclock till about 6 pm in the night, and only 10 percent of the time were we needed up stage.
Still, we put up a rather splendid performance singing Just a Single Voice and Love Changes Everything. The applauds came in at the ending of the song where we held a chord for almost 6 to 7 bars. It was a FFF volume then, so it was a rather dramatic ending and all.
Kranji choir has proved herself again.
During this time, the choir had a rather good reputation among the school at this period of time and thus the choir had alot of pride in ourself, something seen by other CCAs as being proud or cocky.
Also, the next thing was which made many other CCAs dislike us was our recruitment scheme. Mr Francis Liew requested that the pupils whom he has short listed are to be made complusory to join the choir ( as many of our sec ones now are familiar with :P )
Because of this very fact, kranji choir did very little campaigning as compared to other CCAs.
Many sec1s came in unwillingly at first, i don't blame them. If it was me, i would be ultra super duper pissed. And so were other CCAs. Because some of the CCAs had sec 1s inside already but these sec1s were forced to come out and join the Choir.
This not so nice move by the the choir was due to the fact that only 4 sec 2s remained and in order to ensure the survival of choir, we had to start forcing people in.
Anyway, currently, i do hope that the Sec1s who are still in the choir enjoy their time inside and learn that choir is alot more then just opening your mouth. As much as i hate to implement all the push ups and fall in thing, i hope you all endure with it as it is a system to ensure order in the CCA.
I wonder what next year's recruitment scheme is like again.. xD
