This evening Joel was one of 7,500 children singing in a Young Voices concert at the Manchester Arena. He has been practicing the songs and the actions for the past six months, with increasing enthusiasm and excitement. Jude and I went along to watch and admire the (evil) genius that is the Young Voices series.
The idea of getting all those children singing in an arena is truly genius. Tickets for the parents are around £20 each, the children need a t-shirt (another £15) and then there is the DVD. All these things aimed squarely at parents, who must be terrible if they don’t buy tickets, don’t get the t-shirt or don’t invest in a memento of their special moment. I’m still slightly in awe of the whole thing.
The show itself was done well. The children seemed to be having a really wonderful time, which ultimately is the most important thing.
When the lights went out at the start of the concert all the children screamed and yelled. It was quite a noise; and when the singing started, it was excellent.
The choir sang songs and medleys with other acts singing or dancing in between. It was a proper show, and the children were legitimately part of a good, professional, concert. I had no idea who the guest singers or dancers were – which made me feel comfortably old.
There was a group from Liverpool called Mic Lowry who came on to crucify some John Lennon songs — cue fumbling for the phone and googling “Mick Lowry” (who?). Inevitably after their second song they spelled out their name for those of us who didn’t know who they were. Also a singer called Lucy Spraggan, who was apparently on the X-Factor. She did her version of “Gold Digger“. She was good.
The dance troupe, Urban Strides, did an excellent routine to Renegade Master; and finally there was a bloke who came on to a cover of Prince’s “Let’s go crazy” and some other songs.
There was quite a mix, and while it wasn’t really what I’d normally listen to, we weren’t just watching thousands of children singing songs that frankly we had all heard hundreds of times already.
If I’ve got a complaint, it’s that the whole thing is done on such a massive scale that it’s very difficult to pick out individual children. For the first half hour the sound of singing was spoiled by the nearby mothers wittering away about trying to spot their little darlings in the sea of white t-shirts. I think my hearing aids might have been overly amplifying their voices, because after I took them out I could hear the music and the noisy mums were down to a quiet murmur.
The whole thing was good fun, and the experience must be amazing for the children. After we picked up Joel from school (at about 10:50) he wanted to tell us all about it. It was close to 11:30 when he finally got to bed. No idea how he’ll be tomorrow morning.