JESSIE Carmichael's method of teaching singing is definitely old school.

"Please children. Pay attention. Now first of all get your stance. Don't stand with your feet together," she urges the children before her.

"Put your right foot a little bit ahead until you're comfortable. Swing like that. Heads up. Now work your mouth. Come on. Long Live Lucy."

Her words are gentle but clear and powerful like cut glass, her language a song of lilting emphasis.

For the grades five and six Lake Boga Primary School children who have stood before her over the past three months, her approach is rigorous and definitely old-fashioned, like the words of the patriotic songs she's teaching them.

Yet the 91-year-old who coached a choir of children from the same school to national acclaim almost 60 years ago is out to do the same again.

Now a Melbourne resident, Jessie has travelled the 650km round trip to Lake Boga almost fortnightly since September to train her new charges for a concert on Friday.

Within four months she will have taken them from tuneless rookies to singing angels whose diction and notes are second to none, just as she did with Lake Boga children in 1951.

That year, enlisted by a principal who was mad on music, Jessie coached the Lake Boga Primary School choir to win a national competition to perform with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

The 18-strong choir was flown to Melbourne to sing in front of a vast crowd, including then Prime Minister Robert Menzies, as part of the Commonwealth Jubilee celebrations.

It was an outing of such rarity and honour that members recall it to this day as one of their great moments.

Former telephonist Grace (nee Fitzpatrick) Lindsay, then aged 12, remembers being very nervous.

"We were from a little school that had about 60 kids," says Grace, 72, who now lives in Swan Hill.

"Even to go to Kerang was big in those days but to go to Melbourne and in a plane was way out."

Jessie went on to coach many choirs and recalls concerts around Swan Hill that attracted people from far and wide.

The story of her return and Lake Boga primary choir's training is being filmed for a documentary called, Seriously Singing: a Cinderella Story, that argues for music to be treated seriously in Australia's education curricula, just as well as it makes the Cinderella-like point that small towns can shine even against fancied, bigger places.

Film maker Malcolm McKinnon, who developed the project and has been filming Jessie's return, says Lake Boga's 1951 success is a valuable and instructive chapter in the town's history and for towns everywhere.

He says communities have much to reap by digging into their histories and contemporary lives to discover unrecognised strengths.

"There are pertinent lessons to learn from Jessie's story, such as the impact one teacher can have," Malcolm says.

While not scheduled for Melbourne's Exhibition Buildings as it was in 1951, Friday's concert at Lake Boga is attracting national interest.

Patrons, including the 1951 choir, are expected from hundreds of kilometres away.

    CHECKLIST
  • Choir concert, December 11, 7.30pm, Lake Boga Community Centre (Lalbert Road). Details ph: (03) 5037 2286. Anyone wanting to support the documentary can contact Camille Cullinan, ph: (03) 5036 2473.