CeleBRation Choir
The CeleBRation Choir is a therapeutic community singing group that aims to help people with communication difficulties related to a neurological condition and to research the benefits of singing.
The Choir is led by co-founder, music therapist and doctoral student Alison Talmage, who was awarded a Kiwibank Local Hero medal for her work with the CeleBRation Choir. It is an initiative of the University of Auckland’s Centre for Brain Research and started in 2009.
“We include warm-ups, breathing and vocal exercises, and songs for enjoyment and to work on our individual voice, speech, language and memory goals. Singing may also help to ‘rewire’ the brain after brain injury, and so could help with language problems like aphasia.
We sing a wide variety of familiar and new songs and we welcome participants’ preferences and suggestions. These include traditional folk songs and rounds, waiata, show tunes, Christmas music and pop songs from the 1950s on.”
“Sing, They All Said, Just Sing”
“Sing, They All Said, Just Sing” is a short documentary about the CeleBRation Choir. Directed by Sakshi Chadha, it tells the story of three choir participants. The film was selected for the 2020 New Zealand Doc Edge Film Festival.