Euphony and Boystrous Camps

Euphony Camp Boystrous Camp

Music Camps for Euphony and Boystrous

In March our two senior premier choirs were able to spend a weekend at Peter Snell Youth Village for choir camps. This beautiful setting at the end of the Whangaparaoa Peninsula, overlooking the sea, is the perfect place to sing, get to know each other and work on building a choir. Euphony and Boystrous are choirs made up of Middle and Senior School students who have started their 2021 season with weekly rehearsals and weekend workshops to rehearse and get their recital pieces ready for the year ahead.

Euphony is led by Choir Director David Squire and the accompanist is Juan Kim. David has led this choir for 10 years and under his leadership and direction Euphony has been an awardwinning source of pride for our school.

This longest-running cultural group has been on several overseas and national trips through competitions and opportunities to perform, a recent highlight being the 2019 European Tour to Hungary, Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic. Euphony is looking forward to their choral season, which officially begins with the regional competitions later next month.

This year’s Euphony camp had some special guests too. Head Girl for 2020, Christina Yang, was a long-time Euphony member, who is working with the choir on a piece written for her to play the Chinese guzheng (a Chinese zither). This piece, written especially for Euphony by New Zealand composer David Hamilton, is called Looking at the Moon. At camp we also had the expertise of internationally recognised singer and vocal pedagogue Catrin Johnsson, who helped refine the sound and gave the singers useful tips to improve their vocal technique.

Boystrous was able to go to Peter Snell Village and have a camp this year as well. This choir is relatively new, and was created out of a need for lower voices to come together and work on a range of repertoire. Their conductor, Giancarlo Lisi, was joined by Pene Pati, who worked with the choir to workshop and build choral techniques.

“To me, camp was an incredibly great opportunity for our whole choir to really bond and get to know each other better. I made some amazing friends and felt like it was a really efficient way for us to improve our singing, both individually and as a choir.” – Jayden Wang, Year 9

The camps offer time to develop choral technique, bringing students together for the 2021 season and preparation for the NZ Choral Federation’s Big Sing festivals.

The Auckland regionals will be held at the Auckland Town Hall where both Euphony and Boystrous will be competing on Thursday 24 June. Each choir sings three pieces for their regional recital and one piece at the evening Gala Concert. During the regional competitions that take place throughout the country, 24 choirs are invited to the national finale, which this year will return to Christchurch for the first time since 2007.