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Airdate: Outback Choir

This doco about a regional children’s choir and its founder Michelle Leonard will leave you smiling from ear to ear.

2014-11-23_2342What an inspiring documentary is Outback Choir, coming up this Sunday night on ABC.

This follows a regional children’s choir and its founder Michelle Leonard on a personal mission to bring a desolate musical landscape back to life.

Produced by Heiress Films (Making Couples Happy, Life at 9) this will leave you smiling from ear to ear (trust me!).

Chronicling their journey from audition to stage, the film reveals the trials and tribulations of running a children’s choir in the most isolated and disadvantaged region of NSW, where sport is king and music education is non-existent.

Inspired by her own musical education Michelle Leonard has high expectations. She doesn’t want to teach these primary-aged children any old music. She wants to teach them contemporary, original, demanding music by Australia’s best, up-and-coming composers. She wants the children to sing in fugues and perform with a professional orchestra, in front of hundreds of people. Is her belief in these children fanciful, or will they step up and soar?

As the film follows Michelle and four children from different towns through epic auditions and music camps to the end of year concert, surprising truths are revealed and a snapshot of childhood in rural Australia begins to emerge. But despite vastly different lives, hopes and dreams, one thing remains the same for all the children: to believe in themselves, they all need someone to believe in them. Set against a landscape of devastating beauty, Outback Choir is a moving portrait of the fragile world of possibility that is childhood, and reminds us why no child, anywhere, should grow up without music.

7:30pm Sunday on ABC.

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