In an article first published in New Zealand’s ‘Challenge Weekly’, JOHN McNEIL speaks with Sharon Thorburn of the Kotuku Choir…
When police caught up with Isaiah (not his real name), the young Wellington, New Zealand, gang leader had a six month history of robberies and burglaries. Although only 15, he headed a youth gang with 150 members, had an established criminal career and was prison-bound.
While facing his court case, his aunt called him. “As a last hope, they wanted me to join this choir with my sister and my brother,” he said.
CHANGING LIVES: Kotuku Choir director Sharon Thorburn and some of the choir members.
“I wanted to reach the children in the darkest places in our country. I wanted to reach the gang kids, and I wanted to reach the P labs, and I wanted to reach the abused ones. I wanted to reach the ones in solo families, I wanted to reach the wealthy ones whose parents were working and they were home alone. I wanted to reach anybody who didn’t have a voice”
– Sharon Thorburn.
Meeting Kotuku Choir director Sharon Thorburn at an audition was the turning point in his life.
“She asked me a simple question: ‘Who are you?’.
“It really shook me, that kind of question. It kept ringing in my head. I looked at my hands and I thought, ‘I’ve hurt people, I’ve beaten people, I’ve led people in the wrong direction. How am I going to change?’ ”
The former gang leader said staying with the choir has allowed him to break away from the gang. His dedication so impressed the judge presiding over his case that all charges were dropped.
Now Isaiah is a key member of the Kotuku choir, which leaves for a tour of the United States, Canada and Britain on 27th December.
The choir of 27 is a melting pot of young people from diverse socio-economic backgrounds. It helps them learn new ways through the discipline of music and hard work.
The month-long tour, with dates to sing alongside some of the world’s most acclaimed youth choirs in England and the United States, is the culmination of a dream for Sharon Thorburn that began three years ago.
The journey to this point has been studded with amazing twists and turns that have tested her faith to the max.
Growing up in Taita, the daughter of Salvation Army parents, Ms Thorburn headed into a career of singing, music and English teaching. At 20, she taught teenagers in Kenya for two years in mud huts, with no electricity or running water. At the other end of the scale, she has taught in wealthy expatriate schools in Brunei.
Sharon has a post-graduate degree in music composition from Victoria University, and in 1994 was the university’s Composer of the Year. Her students and choirs have won many major awards. While director of music at Tawa Intermediate School, Wellington, her choir represented New Zealand at a prestigious choral festival in Melbourne. While director of music at Kelburn Normal School, her choir performed with the Vienna Boys Choir, among other prestigious engagements.
Three years ago, however, she threw this all in to establish her own academy, Sing a New Song.
“I’ve watched education changing lives, but became very frustrated with teaching according to assessment rather than teaching according to relationship,” Ms Thorburn said.
“With society as it is today, I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to touch the lives of children outside the school system in a very meaningful way. I brought up my own children as a solo mother. I understand the struggles and the issues that face our young people, and I couldn’t bear to just be teaching in the system and not make a difference.
In particular, she dreamed of bringing to life a song of hope for New Zealand that would go around the world. It actually took Ms Thorburn six years to act on the dream.
“I waited until my children were independent, so that if I had no income it wouldn’t affect anyone other than myself. When you build a song of hope, you’re not sure what that looks like.”
Leaving her position at Kelburn, she used all her savings to attend an interdenominational retreat called Singing Waters, in Ontario, Canada, where she learned how to heal identities in young people. However, she became very ill there, having to stay an unexpected extra month, and came back in a wheelchair with no money.
PREPARING FOR A BIG FUTURE: Members of the Kotuku Choir
An approach to the Wellington City Council yielded a practice room, but Ms Thorburn could not afford the $NZ20 an hour rental. With a “horrendous bill” at the end of the first week, and few pupils, she drew back to her home.
By the end of the year, the choir had grown to 100 children, but the strain brought her to collapse.
Restructuring, Ms Thorburn approached the mayor of Wellington.
“They gave me the use of an old art gallery building on the wharf. The day before the launch, we had a big empty room, but nothing else, because I still had no funding. Everyone was telling me to call it off, but I knew everything would come in time.
“In 24 hours we got chairs, trees, the children blew up balloons and put ‘love, faith, hope’ messages on them, they painted paintings. On the morning of the launch, I got a phone call from someone who donated $NZ1000. We scrubbed up buckets from the Warehouse department store, in the kitchen; put my grandmother’s cold tea recipe in there to make cold tea punch.”
In the end, 500 people, including staff from many embassies, turned up and A Song of Hope was launched. In the middle of last year, Ms Thorburn realised she needed to go to North America. Ms Thorburn and the choir struggled to raise money.
“I told my choir I was going around the world to set up gigs, and if they waited for me, when I came home, they would have a tour like the world has never seen before.” It seemed a crazy dream. Ms Thorburn set off with broken suitcases, borrowed clothes and no money to cover her mortgage, an eastern American train pass, a parcel of muesli bars to eat on the train, and only $100 spending money.
She arrived in Pennsylvania two days after the murder of five young Amish girls last October. The event had so shaken the community, that Sharon was asked to sing in her first host’s church, a Mennonite congregation. She agreed, and sang a song she had written six years previously at the request of Lower Hutt City Council’s deputy mayor, at a time when the council was under stress after some major public traumas. The song so moved the bishop of Pennsylvania, who was present in the congregation that he asked her to sing in other churches. From there, invitations and funding expanded. In Miami, a group of church people bought her new luggage and clothing.
“It was unbelievable – God just completely revisited Sharon, so I have everything I need to conduct in the most prestigious concert halls in the world.”
Ms Thorburn stayed a month beyond the original two planned, and in the process made contact with some top schools and choral conductors who will host the Kotuku Choir on its tour.
There was a rude shock when she returned, however: half of her choir had quit.
“I came back after three months with everything I had promised them, but they’d joined other choirs. I had lost many of the children that I’d gone to America to help. “I put my head in my hands, but I said, ‘I’m going according to schedule, no matter what happens.’”
So Ms Thorburn held a training camp, which brought her and the young former gang leader together. After what she calls his “light bulb moment”, many of his friends joined.
“I started camp with 20 and finished with 30. I understood immediately why half of the [other] kids had to leave. The choir grew to 50 very quickly.”
“I learned that if you have a dream, you have to be refined yourself first,” says Sharon Thorburn.
At the camp, she also announced that she would waive any fees, which began the hardest year of her life.
“I learned that if you have a dream, you have to be refined yourself first,” she said.
There were times when she did not know where basic supplies like food and firewood were going to come from, let alone the mortgage money. But they have always come on time.
She had sold her car to raise money for the American trip, so she had to borrow cars to get around the city for rehearsals.
“So I lost the capacity to plan ahead. I lost the capacity to do anything except take a small step at a time standing in the dark. That’s been my whole year.” Parents, choir members and support people also came and went, as some found it difficult to hold on in the midst of all the uncertainties.
“Now I have a wonderful team around me, but for the most part, it wasn’t the team I started with at the beginning of the year, which wasn’t the team I had the year before.
It’s very hard to stand beside someone who says ‘We are going around the world; these children are going to learn to sing; they’re going to be ambassadors,’ and every concert we’ve done has not brought the funding we wanted.
“So many people have left because there’s been no sign of anything happening apart from me saying that it’s going
to happen.”
Finally, in the last couple of months, things have started to come together. An appeal by the Dominion Post newspaper brought an outpouring of funds for air fares and uniforms. Maori and Samoan elders have got behind the choir. The chief executives of multi-national companies have promised support. Two helicopter pilots from Nelson with fine voices have enlisted, both to sing and to help mentor the younger ones.
“We have run boot camps. We have had drills at 5am to teach them how to get up early and how to run and how to get fit. We’ve had camps with bankers and diplomats coming in to teach us how to stand, how to shake hands, how to look people in the eye, how to be ambassadors. “So in a very short time – half of this choir has been in it only since January/February – the children have had to learn to sing up to international standard, they’ve had to learn how to stand with Prime Ministers and look them in the eye and be wonderful representatives of our country. That’s a huge achievement for each of them.
“I think my choir has changed about five times since we started it. But now I have a team, and it’s a wonderful team.”
The icing on the cake has been the involvement of rising opera star Zane Te Wiremu Jarvis. “He’s the choir’s miracle,” Ms Thorburn said.
Zane performed with the choir publicly for the first time at the end of October.
“I watched the audience crying as the choir and Zane sang You Raised Me Up, Amazing Grace, and Panis Angelicus.
“At one moment I couldn’t conduct – I just froze because I had never felt anything quite like the synchronicity I was feeling then. It was Zane, the choir and me performing as one heart. I have never felt that anywhere and my choirs have represented New Zealand before. I have had weeping audiences before when my choirs sang, but this was different – it was a new beginning. The choir had transformed.”
During the tour, Kotuku will be hosted by some of the top choirs in the world, and will perform in venues such as the Royal Opera House in London. In 2008 it will host their return visit.
This article was first published in New Zealand publication Challenge Weekly.
