Choir wins place on stage with Foreigner

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This article was published 08/05/2024 (724 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The votes are in. A Brandon high school concert choir has mastered a rock ballad from 40 years ago, and the students have done it so well that they’ll be performing it live on stage next Tuesday with the band Foreigner at Westoba Place.

During each concert, Foreigner invites a local choir to accompany them for the song, “I Want To Know What Love Is,” and asks a local radio station to organize a contest encouraging entries.

Two schools in western Manitoba entered their school’s choir in the “For the Love of Music School Choir Competition” hosted by Brandon’s Bounce Radio 96.1 FM.

The contest was promoted on Mike Lamb’s morning show on Bounce, with listeners casting their votes on the radio station’s website for either Wawanesa School’s Grade 9 to 12 school choir or Crocus Plains Regional Secondary School’s Grades 10 to 12 concert choir.

And “it was close,” said Lamb.

“Crocus came ahead with 58 per cent of the vote,” Lamb said. “And the most massive of shout-outs to Wawanesa and Crocus. We appreciate their entries because it was a ton of legwork to show the students the song, teach it to them, get it to a spot that you think sounds good, record it and upload the video,” he said.

Clint McLachlan, teacher and choir educator at Crocus, said the win was a total surprise.

“It was a welcome surprise — absolutely awesome and the students are pumped,” McLachlan said.

“It’s an amazing opportunity for the kids. They get to perform, be on stage with – and back up — a rock band.”

Grade 10 Crocus student Nathan Clincke called it “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

It was 1984 when the song “I Want To Know What Love Is” was released. That’s nine years before McLachlan was born. He said while he grew up with parents who listened to classic rock, some of his students had never heard of the song.

McLachlan laughed when asked if he had to teach his students when the 1980s were.

“A few of them,” he said as he chuckled. “Some had questions like, ‘Who’s Foreigner?’ But once we started singing the song, I’d hear, ‘Oh, this one,’ so it was good.”

Now that they’ve won the contest, McLachlan said the next step is learning about backstage logistics, working with the band to finalize arrival time, having all 25 choir members dressed in matching school choir T-shirts, and making sure they represent their school while they “get to be rock stars for a day.”

“The worst part of all it is, like with any competition, that there is somebody or multiple somebodies who don’t get to experience what we will be. And we feel for Wawanesa, but at the same time, I’m so proud of our kids,” said McLachlan.

In Wawanesa, teacher and choir director Melanie Lane said she is proud of the school choir’s submission, and that during the voting process, she felt a sense of community from people who went out of their way to tell her they voted.

“And that’s really nice to see that our community cares, that they support our little school and support our choral kids — even people who don’t have kids in school,” said Lane.

“I’m so proud of them,” she added. “They’re just an amazing group of kids and when I mentioned the contest, they said, ‘Why not? We totally have a chance.’

“But that’s part of it, right? You put yourself out there, but you don’t always win everything. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. And you did a good job. We’re really proud of you,” Lane said.

Along with the invitation to join Foreigner on stage for the one song, the band will provide the Crocus choir with a $500 cash bursary.

The band’s founder and guitarist, Mick Jones, said music provides a gateway that opens a fantastic new dimension of feeling and creativity.

“Anything we can do to provide our young ones with the tools to express themselves through music, is our goal in this musical partnership,” Jones wrote in an email to the Sun.

From the control room at the Bounce radio studio on Victoria Avenue in Brandon’s west end, Mike Lamb said while the contest was Foreigner’s idea, he had fun with it and sensed his listeners did too.

“I absolutely loved it. I wish more bands would do things like this, honestly. I think it’s such an excellent way to involve the communities they’re going to,” Lamb said, and added, “Having this really cool way to incorporate the community is brilliant, and other bands should take note.”

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