 VIP
by Nilma Dole
Listening to the Voices in
Praise is absolutely divine for the melodic sentiments expressed in
voice and harmony is truly enlightening. What’s more, once you listen to
a few songs sung by this choir, you will feel as if you’ve gone to
heaven and have come back.
“We should instill values of good music because it calms the senses
and eases the burden of the mind,” said Johnson Gnanadas, one of the
senior members of the choir. Voices in Praise have been singing for
nearly seven years and have been staging their choir concert annually
six times now.
 “We have a small four year-old to senior citizens singing with us and
we’ve sung in different languages including Korean and Latin,” said
Johnson. He added, “We have several layers of the choir including the
tenor, alto, soprano to even mezzo-soprano and contralto.”
However, he did emphasise that many youngsters overlook this type of
singing to more modern types of music.
“Nowadays, the present generation look to commerical pop music or
going out and partying as their form of relaxation but listening to calm
and peaceful music benefits the mind better than all those things.”
The specialty of the choir is that anybody with talent can join it
and free training is given to them until they perform well.
In addition, plenty of support is given by all members of the choir
and the friendships among them are quite a bond.
“There have been many superstars who have received training from us
and are now doing well not just here but abroad too” said Johnson.
He advises youngsters to have focus and determination to succeed and
to be committed to singing. “The choir practises at the Salvation Army
auditorium so we always ensure that we do our best to train and practise
to keep in touch with our voices as much as possible” he said.
Even though the choir has been singing well, there have been some
obstacles but they are hopeful to overcome them. “We have been offered
to sing in India many times but due to financial constraints, we
couldn’t make the trip,” said Johnson.
The choir is certainly talented and deserve a helping hand because
they want to spread the message of peace and love to unite people.
“Our choir is accompanied by six orchestra instrumentalists who
specialise in playing everything from the tabla to even the saxophone”
he said.
The Voices in Praise held their annual concert on August 14 at the
Bible House. “We launched our CD with our best songs for our fans to
listen to us at all times,” said Johnson.
He said, “We hope that people are united and are at peace as they
listen to our singing to truly determine what sort of choir group we
are.” They sang Mozart’s Ave verum corpus in Latin and two Tamil
compositions made by Johnson himself.
The Voices in Praise should be praised for the mighty achievements in
bringing about a change in music and uplifting the harmonic voice making
us feel right at home with their music. |
