The last Friday in October saw around 80 singers from five of our primary schools meet at the very beautiful St Joseph’s Church in Temuka for Jubilate South Canterbury. This is our fourth Jubilate in South Canterbury and brought together Year 4-8 students from Ashburton, Fairlie, Pleasant Point, Timaru South and Waimate. They prepared around a dozen songs in their schools in the weeks leading up to Jubilate. Much of the repertoire was sung at Jubilate 2019 at St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral in June. Our Lady was at the centre of our October festival and we prayed the Hail Mary between some of the items.
A select but appreciative pre-Labour Weekend audience joined us for the event, lending their voices to the more familiar hymns and praying with us as we looked to Mary, our Mother and intercessor.
“Jubilate is a key way children learn and begin to love the music of the Church.” said our Diocesan Sacred Music Advisor, Ken Joblin. “It is a great honour to introduce them to music that is a thousand years old as well as to more recent compositions, all of which will stand the test of time and beauty.” He observed.. We sang in Maori, Latin and English. A highlight was hearing Mr Joblin chant the “Ave Maris Stella”, which he described as the music of the monastery and a melody which would have been chanted by many of our saints down the centuries.
We look forward to Jubilate 2020 in the Christchurch Town Hall where many of our primary and secondary schools will join together in song. Save the date: 7 August 2020: for a midday Mass celebrated by our Bishop and an free evening concert. More details will be released in the coming months.
