Singing praises at Junos

By Joseph C. Gloria

The PraiseTEAM senior choir is hoping to shed the stodgy, stereotypical image of church choirs when they perform at the Tom Lee City Stage for the 2009 Juno Awards in Vancouver on March 29.
"Any opportunity to perform really is a blessing: that's the way we see it," said senior choir director Julio Fuentes. "I'm hoping that from performing at the Junos there will be more exposure for this group."

PraiseTEAM will be performing at noon on the last day of the four-day-long celebration of Canadian musical talents, which will kick off on March 26 with JunoFest 2009. The actual Juno Awards will begin at 5 p.m. on March 29. The senior choir will be performing alongside a host of live performances at the WestJet Street Party, and tickets can be purchased for $15.

Fuentes, 24, is the creative and musical director and senior choreographer for PraiseTeam, the performing arts company stemming from the youth ministry at Our Lady of Good Counsel Parish in Surrey.

What started out as a humble company of nine performers in 1997 has now expanded into a large, multi-faceted, and award-winning deluge of talent and creativity, with over 120 performers of varying ages. The company offers choir and dance programs in several genres and is open to anyone, not just parishioners of Our Lady of Good Counsel Parish.

However, many PraiseTEAM members are from the parish and the local community, and most are from low-income families. "[PraiseTEAM] is not just a dance school that dances just because they like to, but they enjoy dancing and using it as a form of ministering in the parish and doing other ministerial works," said Solange Perrault, PraiseTEAM's external affairs director.

Performers must audition to get into the senior choir. Ages range from teens in Grade 8 to young adults in their 20s. There is a small tuition fee.

Fuentes, who has been with PraiseTEAM dance since October 2002, said most of the performance opportunities and awards go to the dancers, so "in terms of the choir, performing at the Junos would be the biggest thing they've been involved in."

Perrault received the call inviting the choir to the Junos. She said she was more excited than surprised: "We're one of the only Christian groups that have been asked to perform, so we're actually one of the only ones who will be looking at it as an avenue to minister to our audience and not just perform."

Perrault herself was just a part of the audience during PraiseTEAM's earlier days. She had some friends who were involved with the company, and they invited her to attend their performances.

"Year after year I went, and so they kept trying to convince me that I should be part of it, but I was always too shy," she said. Now Perrault teaches the kids and junior choirs, and cannot see herself doing anything else. She is also part of the senior choir.

According to Perrault, the most unique aspect of her job is being able to combine her own experiences with Christ and her relationship with God with her knowledge of music and love of performing. The 20-year-old added that the most satisfying part of teaching is showing her students that "being on stage, performing, and music can be a much deeper experience when you're doing it for God and when you're using it for worship."

Fuentes had a similar feeling: "I don't profess to have done anything really big, but you know, teaching is really where my joy is, not performing.

In the future, Perrault hopes to complete her bachelor's degree in music; Fuentes hopes to have his own performing arts company.

Both Perrault and Fuentes also see the performance at the Junos as an opportunity to break the conventional mould and the thinking that church groups are not high energy. "Usually the name precedes us, so when people say `oh, it's the PraiseTEAM choir,' they know `church,' and our repertoire is 90 per cent high-energy Christian music," said Fuentes.

"I'm sure people will be surprised that we're not your ordinary church choir," Perrault added.

More information on tickets and venues is available at the 2009 Juno Awards web site, www.junoawards.ca and www.junofest.ca. More information on PraiseTEAM is available at www.praiseteamstudio.com.