New Community Choir welcomes you!
Jude Frame is known to many as a talented musician and worship leader but her day job (as well as being a Mum) is teaching music in Ballyholme Primary School where she has, not one but four choirs!
And now Jude has added another, this time a Community Choir that rehearses every Wednesday night in the spacious Knocknagoney Church. Jude is married to Andrew who has been the Commissioned Parish Worker there since December 2020.
“I’ve probably had this idea for years,” she says. “Really just wanting a choir that everybody and anybody can come to from the tots, right up to the ‘oldies’.
The choir has been practising for just a few weeks, but, even with colds and bugs doing the rounds they’ve averaged 30 keen singers which has been really encouraging.
“On the first week some folk turned up that we’d never met, and it turns out they’d heard some chat about the choir in the local school playground so they just came along!”
Although the choir meets in a church, it’s not a church choir, and draws from the local community as well as from parishioners. Indeed, the invitation to join is open to anyone within travelling distance.
Here’s what some of the choir members say:
“This is the best one and a half hours in my week. I feel really good after singing.”
“It’s the first choir I’ve been in for 40 years. I’m loving it.”
“This is really good fun. It’s nice to have a choir where everyone can be involved. You don’t need to particularly be musical, and you don’t have sheets of music you need to read. And of course, singing is so good for you.”
So, what is Jude’s vision for the choir?
“The first thing is, I think, that we are good! That’s important to me – that we produce something good that people want to listen to as well as be part of. But I suppose the bigger, and more important vision, is just that we create a community and a place for people to come, to get to know each other, have a bit of craic and let off steam. I could rhyme on for days about the benefits of singing and mental health and well–being! I want the choir to enjoy everything that singing brings.”
The Community Choir’s first official engagement will be carol singing in the Community Garden at Knocknagoney at 6.30 pm on Wednesday 22 December.
It’s not too late to join for that. Just come along to the church on Wednesday at 7.30 pm, especially if you can sing tenor or bass. Find directions to Knocknagoney Church at this link.
