Amazing Harmonies

Amazing Harmonies is a community choir based in North West Edinburgh, using singing to bring people together to promote health and wellbeing, build networks and celebrate diversity. Tinderbox and Amazing Harmonies have partnered over the last few years to provide access to musical instrument tuition to children in the local area.

In September 2020, a new incarnation of this project began as Jenny, Sam and Liam from Tinderbox began providing keyboard and guitar lessons online via Zoom to the children of Amazing Harmonies. Along with Dave, the administrator of Amazing Harmonies, the team met with 11 children and young people on Monday evenings from September to December. The groups were full of big personalities, so although none of us had ever met in person, there was a great sense of fun and camaraderie throughout.

Several different pieces of music were learnt across the term, all chosen by the students. This included Someone You Loved, Coffin Dance and Jingle Bells. Across the term, we were also working on putting together a video of Wannabe by the Spice Girls. Everyone was recorded over Zoom playing different parts of the song, and it was edited together into a video interspersed with clips of everyone dancing and having fun. As it was December, we decided to make the song our own and turn it into a Christmas version, adding some sleigh bells and answering the question of what we really really wanted for Christmas! The video got a great reaction when it was shown at the Amazing Harmonies online Christmas concert, and is available to watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAWfjxSasVw

It has been fantastic to see that several of the young people who came to the lessons have chosen to continue their learning by joining the Tinderbox Saturday morning online music school, which recently started back up again for 2021. I’m sure I speak for the whole team when I say we are very proud of everyone who attended the lessons and hope to see them again soon!

– Jenny Laahs