The New Zealand Secondary Students' Choir came together in the April holidays in Wellington with Deputy Head Student, Freya Kersey, selected to join the choir. The choir sang 'Wairua Tapu', a hymn to the holy spirit, as part of the National Anzac Day service in Pukeahu National War Memorial Park. Freya has written of her amazing experience which is a great read and the video from TV1 shows the performance so watch for her.

During the first week of the school holidays I travelled to Wellington for a week-long workshop with the New Zealand Secondary Students' Choir (NZSSC), in preparation for our performance in the national ANZAC ceremony. We all arrived on Monday morning, and practised every day until Sunday- so in total, we did about 48 hours of singing! Along with our ANZAC performance, we were also asked to sing at Prince Phillip’s memorial service at St. Paul’s Cathedral. This was a slightly stressful event because we were asked about three days in advance and this was our first ever performance as a group which would be broadcast on live television… Things went smoothly in the end, and we got to sing in front of the Prime Minister and the Maori King which was a real honour. The ANZAC performance was quite surreal: we had spent the whole week practising for it and by the time it actually arrived, it didn’t seem quite as big and scary as it had on the Monday morning! The video below is of us singing Wairua Tapu, a prayer to the holy spirit to cleanse and bless everyone in heaven and on earth. My favourite aspect of the song is that the actions are the lyrics translated into New Zealand Sign Language, which feels especially important to include in our performance so that everyone can enjoy it. I am very grateful to be a part of NZSSC, and even more so to represent Rangiora High School through my singing, so I hope you enjoy the video!
Click here to watch the video