A churchwarden says, “Thank You AFC!”
The following is a grateful grant recipient testimonial from Br. Peter Cory, Churchwarden at St. Mary Magdalene Anglican Church, Napanee, in the Diocese of Ontario. It has been published with his permission.
I want to thank the Anglican Foundation of Canada (AFC) and its supporters for the $5,000 grant you provided to my church, St. Mary Magdalene Napanee.
We have a wonderful outreach program for young people that we call the Harmony Lounge & Music Club, teaching music to youth in a safe space where they can learn and develop their skills and talents. (Actually, the model for our program was developed from a “best of” collection of other church music and arts programs funded by AFC.) Your grant for the Youth Voices album project was meant to help us nurture and grow this new ministry and test the possibility of a developing a youth-led Young People’s Recording Studio.
When I learned in 2023 that some of these ambitious youth wanted to produce an album, I was not surprised. The technology and mechanics of making an album these days are pretty easy to acquire and use. With your funding it seemed like something they could pull off. So, from that standpoint I was not shocked to see this album, Origin Story, appear, replete with its own cover and available on CD. Thank you, AFC!
But the talent and skill to make music that people want to hear is another matter. If I am to be totally honest, I never have high expectations when it comes to recordings like these. It’s not the genre. I love a lot of categories of music, including Classic Rock, Jazz Fusion, Classical, Choral, Baroque, and more. And it’s not the fact that the album was made by people who were all under 20 years old. Two of my favorite piano concertos were written by a teenager by the name of Frédéric Chopin.
The low expectations were perhaps owing to my narrow viewpoint: that a bunch of kids making music in a small-town church basement couldn’t possibly impress me. But boy was I wrong! I was so wrong in fact, that I was moved to review the album, song-by-song, on my Facebook page and encouraged everyone in my network to give it a listen on one of the many streaming platforms where it can be played.
In short, it’s a lovely collection of musical gems. It includes raw, honest songs that reveal how a lot of young people feel these days. There are a variety of sounds ranging from 1990s grunge to psychedelic. I was particularly impressed by some of the more powerful vocals and the strong instrumental performances—drums and guitar.
If you’re not into rock, you might enjoy one of the album’s instrumental tracks, called Hour Glass from a duo named “EPILOGUE”. I just love the layering of sounds, and the song sparkles with warmth and positivity, with only a dash of wistfulness. Very well produced.
This recording is testament to what the Harmony Lounge program is all about, and what a church community can do when it makes a choice to invest love and attention in its youth. Most of the students featured on the album attend a high school that is less than half a kilometre away from our church—a school community that we had never previously connected with. Who knew that music was the connective tissue we had been missing all these years!
In addition to being a churchwarden for basically, forever, I am a member of the Anglican Order of Preachers, and I have devoted my professional life to at-risk youth. I know better than most the positive impact that one person, or one group of people, can have when they support, nurture, and develop the talents of young people.
You helped us achieve something very special with the grant for this album and I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to make my gratitude known.
Blessings to you and all the AFC Board, staff, and members.
Br. Peter Cory
If you are an AFC grant recipient and would like to submit a testimonial to be featured on the AFC blog, please send to Michelle Hauser, Development & Communications Officer at [email protected].
