Parties for the Arts: One Day Choir pays tribute to Margot Fournier

An interesting experiment took place at the Margot Fournier Center for the Arts on Sunday.

Prince Albert Arts Council’s Arts Parties: The One Day Choir with Kayleigh Skomorowski and Brock Skomorowski attempted to create a choir for one day.

The event took place at the Margot Fournier Arts Center and also paid tribute to the building’s namesake and founder of the Prince Albert Boys’ Choir.

Kaylee Skomorowski, a member of the Arts Council, said the idea came from discussions about the next Parts for the Arts event.

“I follow on Instagram and social media. There was a big movement in New York with the Gaia Music collective. They are called, but they do big one-day choir events,” Skomorowski said.

Skomorowski said that in major centers such as Sydney, New York and Toronto, there are many pub choirs where people have the opportunity to sing without any commitment or prior knowledge. She wanted to try something similar in Prince Albert, but with the whole community.

She said the Arts Center was the perfect location, so they decided to turn it into a tribute to Margot Fournier.

Skomorovsky said many people came to the event to show their appreciation for Fournier. The event was fully booked in advance and the room was full of energetic singers of all ages.

The idea was new to Skomorovsky, who had given many performances, but had nothing to do with “Chorus in One Day.”

“I taught choir. I rehearsed choirs. I’ve never put a whole group of strangers in a room for three hours and then created something called a choir and then kind of never had to exist again, so this is definitely a new project for me,” she said.

Sunday’s event began with a warm-up to get everyone comfortable with singing and some basic techniques before learning two pieces of music.

The first piece was the Ukuthula, a Zulu prayer for peace. She noted that having a piece with repetition is key for the choir, which is one of the reasons she chose it.

“It’s very focused and very repetitive, which is why it’s in Zulu rather than English, but it’s quite repetitive and there are some opportunities for some solos as we work through it,” she said.

The second choice was a choral arrangement of John Legend’s song “If You’re Out There.”

“(It) has a lot to do with building community and bringing people into our circle, which is kind of the goal today,” she explained. “(It’s) just to bring people together and hopefully break down some of the otherness for a while, just so we can all do something together.”

Her goal was to sing for an hour, take a break, sing for an hour, take another break, and then go for a run.

“Then we’ll do our performance just for the camera for maybe the last 15 minutes and then go our separate ways,” she said.

The One Day Choir was open to everyone from all walks of life, which was somewhat different from most of the Arts Council’s Parts for the Arts events, which cater to specific interests.

“They’re more geared toward people in certain areas, and it’s like anyone can come,” Skomorowski said.

Even before the event began, Skomorovsky hoped that it would unite people.

“I hope this works, I’m really flying by the seat of my pants. It’s hard to plan for something like this,” she said.

At the end of the day, Skomorovskaya said she was pleased with the day’s work.

The final performance was streamed live on the Prince Albert Arts Council Facebook page.

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