The Richmond Singers will be visiting South Delta for a concert next weekend.
The women's choir will be joined by special guests from Vancouver Island, the Village Voices of Qualicum Beach, for the benefit show at Tsawwassen United Church.
"Richmond Singers is a group of women that's very community minded. One of the things we're trying to do more of right now is have a chance to collaborate with other choirs," says Richmond Singers director Natasha Neufeld, who lives in Tsawwassen.
The show is called Sail Away.
"The music is all related to water in some way," says Neufeld, who attended UBC before continuing her singing and conducting studies at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg, Austria.
There will be a few songs the audience can sing along with at the upcoming show.
"It's a lot of fun for them to be able to do. We've discovered that our audience loves to sing along, not just at Christmas time," she says. "We try to do some pieces that they know and enjoy. And then challenge them a little bit with things they might not [know], as well."
Neufeld, who teaches singing and piano in Richmond and Tsawwassen, has been singing with the Vancouver Chamber Choir since 2003. She previously sang with the UBC Chamber Singers, Opera in Concert in Toronto and with the Bach Choir in Salzburg.
She expects about 50 of the 55 Richmond Singers members will perform at the concert.
The upcoming show is a fundraiser for an elementary school in the Philippines affected by last year's major typhoon.
"We, as island communities, thought it would be really nice to help out the Philippines because of the devastation that had happened there," says Neufeld. The Richmond group, which started in 1971, will travel to Vancouver Island later this month to perform again with the Village Voices, a mixed community choir directed by Rosemary Lindsay Richmond Singers copresident Wendy Lee says the group enjoys travelling, noting it ventured to Ottawa in 2003 and St. John's in 2008 to perform.
"We love to sing," she says.
The group has performed at shopping malls, city hall, South Arm Fall Fair, the airport and senior centres. It has also helped raise funds through benefit concerts for groups like Richmond Hospice Society, Canadian Cancer Foundation and Tim Horton's Kids Camps.
The Richmond Singers present Sail Away, with special guests the Village Voices of Qualicum Beach, on Saturday, April 12 at 2:30 p.m. The concert will be held at Tsawwassen
United Church, 693-53rd St. Tickets are $10 for adults and free for children under 16.
Tickets are available from choir members or at the door.
For more information on the Richmond Singers, visit www.richmondsingers.ca.
For more on the Village Voices of Qualicum Beach, check out thevillagevoices.net.
