The BBC Singers in C & O Magazine

[Gabriel Jackson]

So what is the group scheduled to sing here: http://www.rcm.ac.uk/Hp/events/details/?id=7018 ?

This is obviously a new (and welcome) development then. Last year, for the King James Bible composition competition finals, which was co-sponsored by the RCM, the chamber choir from the Junior Department sang the shortlisted pieces, because the RCM itself had got rid of its chamber choir some years before.

[Gabriel Jackson]

I wonder how regularly a group of singers has to sing together before they constitute a choir.

Dull sublunary choirs probably rehearse together once a week, and none of them fulfil solo engagements.

The objection often raised to the BBC singers is that they sound like soloists and don't produce a choral 'sound', but do they rehearse together any less than (say) the Tallis Scholars, whose members also have other lives as soloists?

The BBC Singers have (or had, before recent developments) a full-time staff of 24 singers, not all of whom do every concert/recording etc. Absentees are replaced by freelance singers from a fairly select list, so those who dep tend to do it regularly. The same singers rehearse a project as take part in the final concert/recording, obviously. The group works together every day, and so is a very tight-knit one. Not all of the singers do outside work as soloists, by any means, but quite a few also sing with other ensembles (Tallis Scholars, Exaudi and the like).

The Tallis Scholars are a project choir so each concert, or tour, or recording, is undertaken by whichever singers are available to be booked for that project, drawn from a small pool of regulars, with quite a few members more or less taking part in everything they do.

Both groups, and any group of singers at a music college, presumably need far less rehearsal than the rest of us.

I wouldn't bank on that, when it comes to music students!

Things have obviously moved on since I started doing student composer workshops with the BBC Singers (neither the RNCM or the RCM had chamber choirs then) but the work we do with them remains invaluable in that the practical advice and input they get from experienced professionals is something they cannot get elsewhere, and (for whatever reason) often remains the only opportunity they have to hear their pieces for voices realised (this also goes for Oxford students); some of them, of course, can only be sung well by a group like the BBC Singers in any case. (The singers sight-read everything in these sessions.)

[BasilHarwood]

I know TCM Chamber Choir (dir. Stephen Jackson, a collegue of GJ's as he's also chorus master of the BBCSO) rehearse twice a week and perform very, very frquently; seemingly more so than any of the other college that runs a chamber choir.

[Gabriel Jackson]

I know TCM Chamber Choir (dir. Stephen Jackson, a collegue of GJ's as he's also chorus master of the BBCSO) rehearse twice a week and perform very, very frquently; seemingly more so than any of the other college that runs a chamber choir.

And they are very good, are they not?!

[BasilHarwood]

And they are very good, are they not?!

Going on what I've heard, yes!

[Wolsey]

I was lucky enough to be present when David Willcocks conducted a concert by the RCM chamber choir in honour of Herbert Howells on an anniversary (not sure which one) - H H was very elderly.

The concert was arranged by the Royal College of Organists, and was held at Holy Trinity Church, Prince Consort Road, London on 11 November 1982, in honour of HH's 90th birthday; John Birch was at the organ. I was at that concert, and have the programme for it beside me.