The North Orange County Children’s Choir is ten years old, wow!
At the beginning, when it was founded, there were twenty-five members. By the end of the first season in April, 1990, it had expanded to forty five members. Over the ten year period, a total of 283 children have joined the NOCCC at one time or another, for at least one semester. The choir has increased to and maintained its membership to around sixty to seventy boys and girls. Today, over one-third of the members have been with the choir for more than five years.
The choir has grown from the initial one class, one part form to today’s four classes / four groups with multiple sections. The kids’ voices are better trained, their sight singing capabilities are greatly improved and they have accumulated a lot of experiences in performing, musical communication and choral singing. Most im-portantly, they have learned and built a sense of honor, discipline, responsibility, self-confidence and team spirit. They have all enjoyed being in the NOCCC. All of them have made a bunch of good friends. Boys and girls, we hope each one of you will treasure your good friendship with your fellow choir members, and also all the good experiences and lovely memories.
In the past ten years, we have been fortunate to have had many wonderful music teachers (total of thirteen) come to teach in our choir. All of them have devoted so much of their time and energy to help train the kids, building up the choir. They did not come to make a living (hardly could they do so at all!). They joined NOCCC and helped NOCCC, because they enjoyed teaching the kids, they shared the commitment of making the better for the youngsters, and most importantly, they all loved and cared about all our choir members so dearly. We thank all of you, dear Mrs. Yang, Mrs. Chen, Ms. Chuang, Mrs. Yeh, and all other teachers.
Last but not least, we owe the biggest debt and gratitude to all of the parents and our sponsors! To the parents, we thank you all for so kindly, patiently and persistently bringing your child/children to and from the choir every week. A lot of you have served on the board annually to help with some of the administrative affairs and do some volunteer work. Without your support, the kids never would have come and the choir wouldn’t have been in existence. To all our sponsors (among them some are our parents, too), we appreciate your generous contribution and sponsorship. The choir would not have been able to hold and host so many concerts, performances and other musical events and educational activities, had there not been your kind contribution and sponsorship.
We are now progressing into the second decade. We will continue our good traditions and progress to become even better. This summer, we plan to organize a NOCCC Alumni Network and Association which will include all NOCCC’s past members. We hope to hold an annual gathering, set up a communication network, thus allow all NOCCC’s alumni in the future to keep in touch, and to continue in com-munication among one another while in college, or at work. We really want all NOCCC alumni to feel proud that they were once a member of NOCCC and continue to be a member of the big NOCCC family.
In addition, a plan is in the works to establish a NOCCC Scholarship Fund which will offer a scholarship to all future NOCCC members who go to college or university in Southern California, or to all past NOCCC members who later pursue music or musical education as a major or a double major in college. We hope to benefit as many members or alumni members as possible.
Well, as we enter to our second decade, we want to welcome more youngsters to come join us. Let’s wish NOCCC continual success, and we will all come back in ten years to celebrate our twentieth anniversary.
