First exposure to One Voice Children's Choir -- at BYU Education Week

During the Month of August each year since moving to Tennessee, we have gone to BYU Education Week, where over 20,000 members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint annually gather together to be instructed by the Church's best and brightest educators.  I dearly wish that every church member could have the opportunity of experiencing BYU Education Week at least one time in their life.  Topics are widely diverse, covering such mundane areas such as personal finance, coping with mental illness, food preparation and storage, intensive gardening, etc.  In the religious realm, one can focus on church doctrine, church history, getting involved in family history, and becoming more effective gospel teachers (Judy's interest as a Seminary teacher here in Tennessee), just to scratch the surface.  My personal interest is in church history (ex., pioneer trails across the west, music sung by the early saints, what became of Emma Smith following the assassination of her husband Joseph, fifty most significant events in LDS church history, etc.).

Janice Kapp Perry and her husband

One thing I have never missed are the LDS musicians featured in the de Jong Concert Hall of the Harris Fine Arts Center.  Their performances have never disappointed.  This year, the music of Janice Kapp Perry was highlighted.  Janice is one of the most prolific song writers that our church has ever produced.  Anyone who has grown up in the church, will be very familiar with her music, which includes such primary songs as "I Love to See the Temple," "A Child's Prayer," "I'm Trying to be like Jesus," and "We'll Bring the World His Truth (Army of Helaman)."
   

subset of One Voice Children's Choir

This year, Janice introduced some groups of musicians she works with.  One group that I payed particular attention to was Utah-based One Voice Children's Choir, a children's choir led by an amazingly gifted choir director, Masa Fukuda.  I was deeply inspired by their performance and the unusually strong connectivity between choir director and choir. Masa Fukuda's life story is well worth the read.

 

The solo performance of Reece Oliveira caught everyone's attention.  Here is the video she was in.

Reece Oliveira at BYU Ed Wk

Recently, quite by accident, I stumbled into Reece Oliveira's website.  Suddenly, memories of the experience at BYU Education Week were refreshed.  Members of One Voice Children's Choir were invited to perform a musical number, "One By One," the words written by Elder David  A. Bednar (one of the Twelve Apostles in our Church), and the music by Paul Cardall.

My best wishes to Reece and her friends. They appear to have a very bright future. Here is a link to their singing of "Glorious" by David Archuleta.