Voices Festival 2018

The Voices Festival 2018

Recently on August 15th, I was one of the members of Voices with Soul that attended The Voices Festival, which is a New Zealand Pops Choir Festival aimed at providing students in years 7-13 with the chance to perform contemporary music at a high level and to inspire great performance. Featuring over 25 schools and nearly 40 groups, it is the largest vocal festival for schools in Canterbury!!

Since I've been at Hornby High School, I have been to this festival twice. My first time was in 2016, which I thought was such an awesome year! But Voices with Soul then compared to now just amazes me because of how much we have grown and our sound has developed so nicely that we now blend like a true whānau!! 

This year, I was super excited to goto the festival as we were unable to go last year due to some technical difficulties with getting the dates wrong.... But this year we were onto it and organised! There was also a new venue this year, at the YMCA in town opposite the Botanical Gardens.. and I thought it was actually a really cool venue with lots of beautifully big studios where we spent the day preparing for our performance in some really cool workshops!! Personally my favourite was the acapella one we did with Jullian Hay who is apart of Voices Co, I really enjoyed that and have actually now considered joining one of their open youth acapella groups!! After the workshops we had some spare time to get ready before soundcheck and so us girls got ourselves looking all dollied up, but after the soundcheck nerves started to kick in, I don't know why but it doesn't matter how many times I go on stage every time feels like the first time again and I get really nervous. But the atmosphere was so  positive that when the show started and we actually got up there, I felt at home and in a complete state of flow. The stage felt like my home, where I belonged. And afterwards I was just so happy and overwhelmed with how well our performance went, and I was so grateful for the awards we received. Overall I think it was definitely a highlight to my year for sure, and I can not wait for next years one now!!!!