Our vision is to build community and meaningful connection through the shared experience of choral music.
Almost everything we do these days is mediated by technology, and some would have us believe we have never been more “connected”. But these “connections” are often superficial and the technology distracting, doing little more than pull our attention away from meaningful things. The St. Margaret’s Youth Choir exists to help our kids, and us through them, reclaim some of what our electronic technologies rob us of. We disconnect in order to reconnect. We turn away from our screens in order to participate in something that does not require the internet and isn’t controlled by an algorithm. We sing together. And by singing together we build connection, real connection. We connect to each other and to things that are much more substantive and life-affirming than what our electronic devices want to make us dependent upon. Choral singing, good choral singing, is connection through and through. It builds connection because it requires skill, a skill we learn together, through experimentation, trial, and error, from someone who shows us how. It builds connection because it requires good listening. We have to listen to each other when we want to make a unified sound—when we want to sing the same note at the same time—and we have to listen to each other when we want to make harmony—when we want to sing different notes that tune to each other beautifully. It builds connection through the experience of mutual joy, a joy that comes from having succeeded in creating something beautiful, something I could not have created myself but only together with you, here, now, with both of us attending to each other and our common goal. Finally, choral singing connects us to our Creator. Our Creator gave us voices and placed us in an environment in which our vocal cords, by producing small vibrations in the air, can make something we call harmony. Harmony is a simple pleasure, a gift from God that can be enjoyed for its own sake, but it is also a gift we can return to Him. We can say things to God and say them to Him in a beautiful way. None of this requires the internet. It could disappear tomorrow and we could still make beautiful music together. We could still offer it back to God as an act of worship. This what we do. We sing together to be together, to experience joy together, and to offer what we have back to God who made it all possible.
Our Director
Our director is Laurelle Czaplinski (née Froese). Laurelle is well-known in Winnipeg and Manitoba as a soloist and vocal instructor. She has a Master of Music degree from the University of Toronto, and led the choral program for Sistema-Toronto in its inaugural year. Some in the Wolseley community will also know her through her work with the Wolseley Vocal Arts summer programs from a few summers ago.
St. Margaret’s Anglican Church
We are a program of St. Margaret’s Anglican Church (160 Ethelbert Street). St. Margaret’s is a vibrant worshipping community with a strong tradition of congregational and choral singing, a tradition that is bolstered by our sanctuary’s wonderful singing acoustic and its simple beauty. The St. Margaret’s Youth Choir is, in part, an attempt to share our sacred space and our love of singing with the younger members of our parish and our neighbours.
