I. The Birth of Christian Mountain Children’s Home Choir
From a distant, remote mountain village came a
world-class choir, that is only seven years old, traveled around the
world, and was loved by all. How did it come about?
This group of orphans, abandoned by their parents,
with slim chances of survival, was taken in by the Children’s Home when
they had nowhere else to turn to. They were fortunate to just stay
alive, and never dreamed of the opportunity to learn music. Musically,
they were like sheets of white paper. How is it possible that they had
become well-known internationally in such a short period of time?
What is even more unbelievable is that the director
of this choir is not a professional musician; a retired minister at 69
years of age, he had only taken a few months of private voice lessons
in his youth. That person is me.
With an old man who had no formal musical education
leading a group of village children whom had not sung in choirs, could
not sing in pitch, and ranged from seven to eighteen years in age with
more girls than boys, how good can it possibly be?
I was born in China in 1929. In 1948 I came to
Taiwan where I was saved and called to become a preacher. I ministered
in Taiwan from 1952 to 1978, at which time we immigrated to America. I
continued serving in churches until retirement in 1990. However, I
never stopped preaching.
Although my vocal training didn’t last long, I had
an excellent teacher, Dr. Wu Buo-Joe. Dr. Wu was one of the favorite
pupils of the famous Italian Tenor, Gigli. Dr. Wu spent a total of
thirty-some years in Italy studying Italian Bel Canto techniques. Dr.
Wu not only taught me but also instructed me to make his techniques
well-known to the public. Now that I am old and have yet to accomplish
what he has entrusted in me, many of his techniques might be lost
forever. I was losing sleep over it. So from old notes and faded
memories, I wrote the book “Traditional Bel Canto Techniques.”
Though Traditional Bel Canto techniques are
wonderful, it takes one ten or even twenty years to master them. Modern
day people have such busy lives that they want instant results in
everything they pursue. Is there room for improvement in this learning
process? After much contemplation, trials, experimentation, and
verification, I finally got it, and designed a method of my own, which
incorporates Chinese Kung Fu and Italian Bel Canto together to enable
singers better understanding of the techniques, an increase in volume,
a wider range, and better sound quality; it’s breathing method is
switched from the traditional exhaling through the mouth to exhaling
through the nose, in order to create a dense and pure head voice. Since
it does not work the vocal cords, therefore preventing injuries,
singers are able to sing for a long time and not become hoarse; this
was later proven by the Children’s Choir. During a summer performance
tour in the US and Canada, they performed over 50 concerts in two
months’ time without losing their voices. In August of 2004, they
performed 24 concerts in 8 days in the Philippines, without a single
person losing his/her voice. What a miracle! Considering most of the
songs they sing are classical selections with high difficulty, such as
Messiah by Handel, Creation by Haydn, and Elijah by Mendelssohn. Each
and every one of the sopranos can sing The Queen of Night by Mozart
(which are the highest songs ever written.) It is all because of my new
methodology, which is recorded in my book, “The New Traditional Bel
Canto,” published in 2001.
Any authoritative theory has to be proven of its
superiority; otherwise, it is just words on paper. I wanted badly to
find successors to my methodology.
For thirty some years, I was busy preaching. Except
for directing children’s, youth and adult choirs, I have not had a
private studio. Though I was retired from ministering churches at that
time, I was still busily preaching, going to places as far as Africa
and China. I traveled several times a year to preach; how can I find
time to sit down and teach voice? I wanted to concentrate on preaching,
yet I also wanted to pass down my voice methodology in my late years; I
struggled in between the two for quite some time. Some Christians asked
me, “Wouldn’t it be nice if you can teach us to sing, and then we can
preach for you?” What they said touched me deeply. I prayed to God,
“Lord! I am not running away from the battlefield of spreading the
gospel. I am teaching them singing so that the Christians can be better
equipped with better voices to sing or speak your gospel!” Therefore, I
set up the following goals for myself:
1. I will unconditionally offer 8-hour Bel Canto classes to clergies
everywhere, so that they may correct their vocal mistakes and
preach with louder and stronger voices.
2. I will unconditionally help church music ministries everywhere
to better equip themselves in order to present the gospel in a
better package.
3. When not in conflict with the 2 conditions listed
previously, I will also teach non-Christian music lovers, because God
does not favor anyone.
After I have set these goals, I scheduled 2 sessions
for the pastors in Los Angeles; each limited to 30 people. They were so
well received and in demand that a 3rd session was added and moved to a
seminary to accommodate over a hundred registered students, which broke
the record of number of people enrolled in any class in the seminary.
The campus was so overwhelmed that they needed workers to direct
traffic.
Later we extended the classes to other locations,
such as the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Oklahoma City, Kansas
City, New Jersey and Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver
in Canada, and even Tzuo Ying, Kaohsiung, Ping Dong, and Liu Kwei in
Taiwan. Everywhere we went, people were eager to learn about it. The
highest attendance was over 150 people in Vancouver.
These 8-hour sessions provide answers, solutions and
new understanding for people who’ve had some foundations. For
beginners, these classes provide a foot in the door, and correct some
basic mistakes, but to improve further and be accomplished take lots of
practice on their own. This is when organized long-term trainings are
needed.
The most feasible solution would be to form a choir;
I would use the time I have outside of preaching to train the choir
members. At that time some Christian music enthusiast asked me to
organize a Choir in Los Angeles. I was living in LA at the time, so it
was something to consider; however, I never acted on it. Perhaps I was
waiting for God’s better planning for me?
During those years, every time I went to Taiwan, I
would visit my old friend, Rev. Shu Yang, in a remote mountain
orphanage. For decades, Rev. Yang and his wife have taken in and care
of hundreds of orphans, relying solely on God’s faithfulness to provide
for all their needs. Many times during the years, when they were almost
out of food, God sent replenishment just in time to sustain them. Rev.
Yang obeyed Jesus’ command to care for the most helpless of all. Who
wouldn’t admire his spirit of sacrificial love? This is what brought me
to visit the aging pastor and the children in the orphanage time and
again.
Each time I was at the orphanage, I asked myself,
“Rev. and Mrs. Yang have given their lives to these children. What can
I do for these children?”
“I can teach them to sing!” Of course! Rather than
making insignificant contribution in the U.S. where talents abound, I
should devote my time in this remote mountainous area to this group of
minority, where my help would be most needed. This would be far more
worthwhile and pleasing to God, especially since these aborigine
orphans are the weakest of the weak. Why not teach the near-lost
techniques to these orphans so that they may become skilled and useful,
and maybe even successors to this school of vocal methodology.
This idea was quite bold and naïve at the same time!
The village where the children live is far from the civilization of big
cities. It takes half an hour to drive to the nearest town, and
one-and-a-half hours to Kaohsiung, the closest metropolitan city. When
typhoon or torrential rain storm hit the area, it’d often wash away the
concrete bridge that best connects them to the outside world. The
alternate route takes them around the back of the mountain on winding
and steep roads. To someone like me who has always lived in cities, it
would be a hard adjustment. Also the climate in North America is
relatively cool, whereas it is hot and humid in Taiwan; you hardly see
any mosquitoes in the U.S., but mosquitoes in Liu Kwei attack without
mercy. In the U.S. there are an abundance of diversified cultural
activities; in Liu Kwei, you are separated from the outside world, as
if in a cultural dessert. What is even more worrisome is that due to
the sizable differences in cultural background and age, there is little
commonality between me and the teachers and children in the home to
serve as basis for communication; loneliness and boredom would be my
greatest enemies. I would be alone, away from my family, in a place
where even making phone calls are considerably inconvenient. To an old
man close to his seventies, all these have to be considered. To stay as
a short-term guest would be fun and interesting, but as a long-term
tenant is quite another story.
But, when I thought about what Lord Jesus has done
for this world, what conditions had he ever lay down? How can these
inconveniences even compare to what Jesus had gone through? When I came
to this realization, I was overwhelmed with shame. “Lord, if it is your
will, I gladly obey.”
On my next visit to Liu Kwei, I shared my vision with Rev. Yang and the staff, and they welcomed me wholeheartedly.
The Christina Mountain Children’s Home Choir was
established in July of 1998. There were 27 members (including 3
teachers, each leading a part, 2 women’s and 1 men’s, because there
were only 3 half-grown boys.) They didn’t need the teachers’ help any
more after the first year.
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