CELPIP Listening Part 4 Practice Test: A Small-Town Choir Goes Viral

NARRATOR: A community choir from Antigonish, Nova Scotia, has become an improbable internet sensation. The Harbourview Singers, forty-two amateur vocalists whose average age is seventy-one, recorded a traditional lullaby in the town's century-old railway station last month, primarily so that a longtime member recovering in hospital could watch the performance from her bed. Choir director Colleen MacIsaac, a retired music teacher, uploaded the four-minute video to the group's modest social media page, anticipating perhaps a few hundred views. Within a week, it had been watched more than eleven million times and shared by several internationally celebrated musicians. MacIsaac describes the attention as overwhelming but gratifying. The choir has since received invitations to perform in Boston, Dublin and Glasgow, although members acknowledge that travelling would be, as one singer put it, a logistical adventure. More significantly, MacIsaac says, nineteen people have inquired about joining, including several teenagers, a development she considers far more meaningful than any number of online views. Rehearsals, held every Tuesday evening in a church basement, are now so crowded that the choir is searching for a larger space.