My Pop Choir B.C. Welcomes a New Director!

In British Columbia, MPC is expanding to add a new director with a creative, enthusiastic approach to music and choral singing.

“Music is the kind of thing that can immediately make you happy,” says Beau Wheeler, who joins MPC with an extensive musical background as a recording artist, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. 

And their exuberant approach to music and singing make them a natural fit.  “If you have a good experience with music that goes out to friends and family, it will create a wave of well-being and positivity.”

Their musical memories of childhood include a mother who sang all the time, jam sessions in the car with their sister and the radio always tuned to pop music. And with a grandfather who played jazz with Nat King Cole and Sammy Davis Jr., it would be no exaggeration to say that music is in their DNA.

“Experimentation was encouraged, and we always had guitars at home,” Beau recalls. “I started writing when I was 13 and I never stopped. It always made me happy.”

Beau studied vocal performance and composition at a university level, and also, as they like to say, in the school of life, working at record shops, guitar stores, and playing in bands.

With over 20 years of experience with music students, they have taught singing and various instruments privately, and also in songwriting and performance workshops.

Not surprisingly, Beau loves all aspects of music, both writing and performing. While they were in high school in the 1990s, they had a friend whose brothers performed in the rock group, Jazzberry Ram, and Beau had the opportunity to sing back up. 

Beau remembers one particular show at the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver. “My friends from Jazzberry Ram had asked me to record a song with them when I was a teenager, and they gave me a tape of Pink Floyd’s ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’ and said they wanted something like the guest vocal on that track.  We recorded the song and I did my best on that. If you know the song, it was a tall order!  Then Jazzberry Ram asked me to sing it live with them at the Commodore, and I said sure! It was a sold-out show, I nearly threw up back stage waiting to go on, and when I did, the audience sang along to all my parts and I remember thinking, well this was fun!”

Over the years, Beau has performed at the Vancouver Juno Awards, recorded and toured with several of their own bands and shared the stage with many ground-breaking artists including Dan Mangan, Shane Koyczan and Tanya Tagaq.

“I like all aspects of music and I like to learn different instruments and different parts of musical experiences.  As a musician you need to push yourself to new horizons all the time.” 

For Beau, My Pop Choir is a “new horizon I haven’t tried.”

From their first visit to a My Pop Choir session, they were captivated. “Everyone comes in from their regular life at the end of their long day and then everyone leaves skipping out of there and chatting – it’s magical!” 

Beau’s first impression of the choir was that it would be an opportunity to experience joy with the MPC singers. “I think I will bring spontaneity, enthusiasm and a playfulness that I think is very important as a part of understanding what music is.”

About their own music, Beau says, “I play in the folk singer and songwriter tradition, and I play acoustic guitar most of the time. I also play electro pop.”

From Beau’s website (www.beauwheeler.com): “Theirs is a music that encompasses a wide spectrum of human experience. With songs that touch on love, loss and redemption, and an unflagging ability to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.”  

Beau feels that “music should be something where you can just be creative and play!”

Check out Beau on Facebook, Instagram, Bandcamp and Spotify.