UniSound Mini-Grant Winner Spotlight: The South Hills Children’s Choir
As mentioned in our previous blog post, UniSound awarded four $500 Mini-Grants to four awesome organizations that are doing some amazing work in their communities! UniSound asked each applicant to share their favorite moment of their organization having an impact on a young person, or group of people during the 2018-2019 season. Over the coming weeks, we will be sharing the awesome moments that helped win them a mini-grant.
As you’ll read in many of these snapshots, each of these winning organizations (and honestly, all of UniSound’s member organizations!) don’t just offer wonderful music performance and music education opportunities to their members, but they also help shape these young people into confident and kind young adults. One of The South Hills Children’s Choir’s main goals is to foster the personal and social growth of each member and to help promote a sense of discipline and accomplishment through musical excellence. Their mini-grant features two young singers who truly embody the SHCC goals:
“The sixth season of SHCC has been the best yet! Of all the great moments we shared, having Alan and Ava join our group stands out as the most memorable. These two singers are not siblings or related, but are both amazing musicians. Aside from singing, they play instruments and compose. And they are both blind. Alan and Ava were catalysts for change in our choir: modeling determination and commitment, hearing music beyond the page, teaching fellow singers about compassion and listening, and giving each of us a new way of “seeing”.
One specific moment stands out: Ava was selected to sing a solo in our spring concert. As she took her place and her clear voice rang out, her eyes sparkled and face shown radiantly, and the audience came alive. She was overjoyed afterwards. ”Thank you, Mrs. Nolan, for letting me sing!” she declared after the concert. All I could say was, “No, thank YOU, Ava!” Ava and Alan are exactly why SHCC exists! Polyphony is power–sing with us!”
And if their spring concert wasn’t enough of a thrill for Alan, Ava, and all the young singers of South Hills Children’s Choir, then the United Kingdom tour that they just completed this past July was definitely the icing on the cake to complete a wonderful season.
What is UniSound?
Our mission is to create a more accessible, sustainable, and equitable youth music ecosystem in the greater Pittsburgh area through building an alliance of organizations that provide music education and performance opportunities for youth. UniSound is a program of Three Rivers Young Peoples Orchestras but is ultimately a collaborative project of more than 35 (and growing!) Pittsburgh area organizations that share a common trait of providing opportunities for children and/or teens to create music out-of-school time. UniSound aims to strengthen organizations by providing professional development opportunities and mini-grants to support work that our organizations are already doing, to connect organizations with musical families with the use of the online directory and shared marketing initiatives, and hopes to provide a voice for organizations to speak up in important conversations, policies, and initiatives in our region. For more info about UniSound, click HERE.
