Maribel Steel - Choirs & Songwriting

CHOIRS & SONGWRITING

From a very early age, Maribel was exposed to a wide range of music styles as her parents played their favourite vinyl records from Spain, South America, France, Russia, Germany, America, the English classics and even top of the pops way back then in the sixties and seventies.

As a teenager, one of Maribel's most enjoyable past times was collecting the latest record releases of her favourite artists and singing along in harmony for hours! She even dreamed she might some day become Australia's next Olivia Newton-John!

For many years however, life took Maribel down a different full time career path - motherhood - and it wasn't until quite some years later that she found herself singing with a choral group 'The Montigue Choristers' singing works like Handel's Messiah, and several gilbert and Sullivan comical opera classics being one of the three little maids in The Mikado.

In 2000, she joined another choir, 'Making waves' lead by Sue Kirkpatrick and again was exposed to a whole new range of world music and four part harmony with many public performances with this keen group of friendly singers.

Then one serendipitous day, Maribel was walking past a furniture shop when the sound of live piano music caught her ear and beckoned her to find the source of this sweet sound. She back tracked her way to the store and saw a young man sitting by a rich golden brown piano and new instantly that he was playing HER piano! After a few moments of negociation with the store owner, Maribel had payed a deposit and left the shop both excited and scared - she could hardly afford the deposit let alone the full payment but as the weeks went by, each small amount was deducted from the price and one happy August morning in 2002, the piano was delivered to her home and took pride of place in the family living room.

Now what? Piano lessons for the next twelve months learning completely by ear as she could not see the music books due to her vision impairment. Over the next several months, As Maribel's confidence grew as a musician she began to write her own practice tunes and caught the musicians bug - playing songs into all hours of the night. With so many fresh compositions coming and going every day, Maribel decided to seriously develop some of these tunes which her friends found inspiring and often moved them to tears - and so , the musical 'A Gypsy Heart' was created (see link under music projects, Isabel).

In 2007, Maribel offered to run a music program as a volunteer parent for her son's Primary school as they had no such program opperating in the school. So once a week, she ran the music program for the seniour grades at Stonnington Primary , teaching songs, movement with music, body percussion and gave the students the opportunity to use percussion instruments.Even though classes were often quite roudy and lively, it was a very rewarding time and Maribel found herself composing simple and fun songs in her head to and from the school yard, her foot steps and cane tapping out the new rhythm as she marched down the quiet back streets of Prahran.

The Song Room

Another wonderful opportunity opened to her in that same year, The Song Room employed Maribel as a teaching artist to run a music program for the students at Debney Meadows Primary School (see link on contacts page the Song Room).

For the next two years, Maribel successfully led a variety of song and music programs for students from grades 1 through to grade 6. She formed two school choirs and led the Senior choir at the music extraviganza event 'The Big Sensation Concert' where seven other Song Room schools all came together on one exciting and colourful performance to sing as part of a 300 children's voice choir at the Melbourne Town Hall, led by music director, Bronwyn Calcutt. It was a most energising and thrilling highlight of Maribel's choir leading experiences!

What many people would not have been aware of at many of their public performances was the way in which these children had to follow the directions of a vision-impaired choir leader who could not give her young choristers eye contact and so, it was very much up to the students themselves to be disiplinned enough to know what Maribel was asking them to do in terms of watching her every hand movement and body gesture. It was also these very kind hearted children and their supportive teachers who would act as Maribel's sighted guides and place her in the conductors position for their concerts at Hamer Hall, BMW Edge and school performances in the assembly room at school.

As Maribel prepared her lessons, she gathered songs from around the world and put together two song books including a variety of original and world music compositions with the invaluable help and recording expertise of Harry Williamson of Spring Studio.

Turramurra & Vocal Nosh

Maribel has also led singing workshops at TurraMurra Folk Festival, in the picturesque Otway Ranges (Turramurra youth choir) and co-presented a Vocal Nosh with Jessica Baitman at Common Ground Seymour. Another Vocal Nosh singing event is schedualed for October this year to raise funds for people affected by the devastating Victorian bush fires 2009. .