I haven't been very active in the "blogging" department ... life is busy and with so many irons in so many fires, it's easy to let these things slip. 

So, with that in mind ... here's a very quick blog entry!

This year, (2024) Awesome Voices will turn 13! Woohoo! We've had a wonderful journey so far and will continue to build on our successes into 2024. Having recovered from the challenges of running a choir during Covid, Awesome Voices is now powering with more than 25 singers on our books. We meet regularly for rehearsals on school term Tuesday nights and perform whenever we can. 

At the end of 2023, Awesome Voices was invited to an Alstonville Historical Society gathering where I had the opportunity to speak about what it was like being a musical director and then we taught a couple of songs to the participants and performed a few tunes for them as well. It was an excellent way to end the year! 

We're looking forward to continuing to develop both our repertoire and our numbers as we head into a new year! 

If you like to sing, then you'll love Awesome Voices! 

I very much hope to see you at a rehearsal or two!

Well, here we are - Awesome Voices is now officially 5 years old and we're heading into the Xmas season once again. Last year, 2015, we tried out the Christmas Carol thing and accompanied by Margot Roberts on piano, played an awesome set of carols and performed in several locations. We had a great time!

We'll be doing the same thing again this year - from the first Tuesday in November, Margot will once again be rehearsing with us and we'll be relearning our Christmas Carol set and heading into the local festive haunts to carol our heads off! Looking forward to it - and who knows, once we're all polished up on our Xmas songs, we might head into the studio and record them all for a wee Awesome Voices Xmas CD. Why not!

The year's been great so far. We're getting our teeth into some new material - quite chunky stuff really - a funky arrangement of Ed Sheerin's I See Fire and one of my original songs, The Harmony Lesson - this song gives a great breakdown of the evolution of harmony over the ages.

Earlier this year, in September, we took to the road and headed down to Blackheath in the Blue Mountains for one of our favourite festivals - The Blue Mountains Choral Festival. This was our second performance here and we had a great time! We went down a treat and the audience seemed to love us! We're already planning to head back down again for the next one, in 2018, and maybe I'll bring Men Wot Sing down as well!

And, Shhhh ... don't tell anybody, but there's even murmurings about a possible tour overseas some time next year ... watch this space!!

Well, that'll do for now ... just a quick blog entry! Hope you're all doing well and enjoying singing! 'til next time!
Simon

Today, we had a wonderful sing in the heart of Alstonville Plaza as a part of the Alstonville Show Week celebrations.

It was a crazy, last minute performance, with about half the choir and yet we managed to sound great! Even had ex-Awesome Voicers Al Hill (currently in Men Wot Sing) and Kathleen Mills (Acapelicans) join us for the set and boost our bass and soprano sections - Thanks guys!

We sang 5 songs all up - and I decided against an encore (which would have been very well received) due to the number of new singers in the group. I've uploaded a bunch of photos from the day (taken by Ewan, my 8 year old son) and you can see them here!

G'day folks, we'll be kicking off term 3 on Tuesday, 16 July and if you haven't had a chance to check us out, please feel very welcome and come on up for s sing!

We're currently working on some great material - Video Killed the Radio Star, Will Ye Go, Lassie, Go, and Katy Perry's Firework as well as a selection of other songs from genres like world music, contemporary, blues and gospel.

Remember, Awesome Voices meets school term Tuesday nights in Happy Mountain, Alstonville Plaza - above Tozer's Top Cuts! Look forward to seeing you all soon!

Simon

As we get into the first term of our new year we have the inevitable re-calibration of the core group of choir members. One or two might move on to new things and other non-members try us out, join up and become fully fledged Awesome Voicers. It's the natural way of things! Bearing this in mind, its an excellent time for us to try and raise the number of singers and head into 2013 with a larger, more solid core.

This year we are planning to perform at various festivals, such as the Blackheath Chorale Festival and Bangalow ChoralFest, as well as performing locally as often as we can. We are currently working on a nice arrangement of Video Killed the Radio Star, as well as Katie Perry's Firework and the Scots classic, Will ye go, Lassie go. I plan to bring more and more new material in over the next few months and these new songs will add to our current repertoire to provide us with an excellent set of performance songs.

There is no requirement for members to read music, we just ask that they be able to sing in tune! If you've ever wanted to try out for a choir like Awesome Voices, why not give me a call on 0401 022 927, or just turn up on school term Tuesday nights, 7.00pm, at Happy Mountain, above Tozer's Top Cuts, in Alstonville Plaza. No experience necessary! All welcome!
Hope to see you soon!,
Simon Chate

A few of the Awesome Voices crew - Kris, Veronica, Jenny, Kate and myself - headed up to the Tweed Civic Centre, Brett st, Tweed Heads on Saturday, February 16th, 2013 for an excellent vocal workshop with Choir of Hard Knocks founder, Jonathan Welch.

He ran a fantastic workshop - very entertaining and informative. He had all 140 or so of the participants, dancing, singing and making other strange noises! Everyone had a big grin on their face and I learned a few new tricks and tips for my work with choirs. I'll be introducing one or two of them into the rehearsal regime for Awesome Voices. All up, it was a great day!

I also discovered that Jonathan was a student of my former singing teacher, Alan Hendrie, back in the days of Sydney Young Opera singing lessons in the 80's & 90's.

A hearty Welcome to Term 1 to you all!

Awesome Voices has had its summer break and is now well and truly up and running! We'll be meeting at 7.00pm, Tuesday February 5th at our rehearsal venue - Happy Mountain - In Alstonville Plaza! I'm really looking forward to it!

This year my hope is to take the choir to one or two festivals, and I'll be applying first up for the Australian Celtic Festival, in Glen Innes and the Blackheath Choral Festival, in the beautiful Blue Mountains. Can't wait!

I've completed a terrific new arrangement of Video Killed the Radio Star and I really look forward to hearing that one, as well as developing a whole bunch of other music and getting it to an Awesome Voices performance standard!

Hope to see lots of you on Tuesday!!!
Cheers, Simon

Hi folks, Simon Chate here, musical director of Awesome Voices. It's very exciting! Finally, after one and a half years, Awesome Voices has its own website! Woohoo! You'll be able to see what we're up to, read the blog, check out various photos, video clips, etc. and generally keep informed about all things Awesome Voices.

I've uploaded a shot of me playing guitar and singing at a monthly local unplugged evening that I run called Rous Unplugged. It's a great night, running on the last Friday of every month, and there's always a great variety of talent there! Awesome Voices has performed at Rous Unplugged twice already!

My plan for the website over the comping months is to upload PDF files of all the music for members to download, and as well as that I'll start recording the songs as MP3's and getting these onto the site for download.

So, without further ado, please enjoy the new Awesome Voices web experience!