A kaleidoscope of music at Nelson's Summer SingFest
26 Feb 2025
On 22 February, Nelson's annual Summer SingFest — featuring 15 local choirs, kapa haka rōpū and performing arts groups — filled Kirby Lane and the 1903 Square with song.
Congratulations to the organising team for putting together such a joyous, diverse event, and thanks to Coordinator Lucy Rainey for providing the following article and photos.
Nelson's Summer SingFest was a free family friendly event and a wonderful celebration of 15 local community choirs (three choirs took a turn singing at both venues). The weather gods were with us and we had a perfect blue sky day for the event - complete with chirping cicadas in the background !
Our MC for the Sing Fest was Alvaro Morales, a Spanish conductor of a choir called La Corale, who provided wonderful energy and humour to the 1903 Square event throughout the day. He also encouraged members of the audience to join a choir — and to get up and dance to the Off Your Rockers choir and the Ni-Van group from Vanuatu near the end of the day.
Relaying the choirs at the 1903 Square via a large speaker allowed their sound to reach further down into Upper Trafalgar St and this helped to attract passers-by after they had been to the Nelson Saturday Market.
The Kirby Lane venue is a small food market with food trucks and outdoor seating adjacent to the well-loved café Victus, so it was the perfect place for the audience to enjoy the music of our smaller choirs over their brunch or lunch.
Our team was delighted to find two kapa haka groups to participate in the Summer SingFest this year. One was a combined group from Nelson College and Nelson College for Girls (pictured at the top of this article alongside the Top of the South Choir), and the other was from a primary school, Birchwood School. Both of these groups were superb and they were noticeably very well-rehearsed in their waiata, action songs and haka. The audiences loved their enthusiasm and energy and we are really looking forward to welcoming them back again in 2026.
It was fabulous to see all of the groups enjoying performing and staying on to listen to the other performances. We had very good audience numbers this year, and each choir brought along their own supporters as well.
The Nelson City Council generously supported this event through their Shape Nelson grant which helped to make the day a real success.
Our NZCF team felt that the Nelson Summer Sing Fest 2025 was the best one yet — and that it has successfully established itself as a major summer event in Nelson.
— Lucy Rainey, Nelson SingFest Coordinator
To stay in the choral loop, subscribe to eBreve, our monthly newsletter.