Let the Peoples Sing 2013

[Oldcrofter]

I was wondering if any Message Boarders have a connection to any of the final six UK (actually, they're all English) choirs in the "Let The Peoples Sing" international radio choral competition and will be following their fortunes ? I have a couple of friends in Exultate.

Farnham Youth (Surrey), Exultate Chamber (Bristol), Wellensian Consort (Wells), Choralia (Wells), Coro Chamber (London) and Taplow Youth (Bucks.)

The UK hasn't had an overall winner (Silver Rose Bowl) since 1979 (Exeter College Choir) - can't find a list of youth choir winners at the moment.

In fact, I think very few British choirs compete internationally - just not a feature of our choir culture in some way ? The Welsh, of course, have a keenly competitive set-up with eisteddfodau at school, local, regional, national and international levels, as do Male Voice choirs.

Does competitive singing improve standards ?

[DracoM]

On the showing of 'BBC Choir of the Year' etc, the outcomes are, shall we say, ahem! a little less than musically satisfying.
De rigeur choreography, eye/ear-catching novelties, silly uniforms - at least that;s that competition. They are TV-orientated, I accept. A radio only comp might actually engender interesting repertoire and skills.

Sigh.......When I think of the daily hard-working, unfussy choirs all round UK..................??

[chorister49]

Fortunately The Choir is giving everyone the chance to judge for themselves whether these fall into the 'unfussy, hard-working' variety or not.

13 January was the girls choir from Wells Cathedral School and Coro from London. Last week's programme played the recordings made by Farnham Youth Choir and Exultate Singers which can be heard on the listen again service. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01pyfr3 starting at 55 minutes.

The Wellensian Consort and Taplow Youth Choir will be played this coming Sunday.

Why the sigh, DracoM?

[MrGongGong]

silly uniforms

like this you mean ?

[mopsus]

I used to sing in the Exultate Singers and recently took part in their 10th anniversary concert. I have also sung for Christopher Finch, conductor of the Wellensian Consort. It's good to see a strong South-Western presence, although I think the members of the Wellensian Consort aren't necessarily based in Wells any more.

[mopsus]

A bit more about Exultate. It arose from the choir which used to sing at Clifton Cathedral, and for a long time there was still a palpable 'class distinction' between the founder members from Clifton, who were more or less constant, and others (of whom there was a greater turnover). Recently quite a few of its members have been students at Bristol University.

Competition is only a very small part of what the choir does. It performs frequently, and as well as pieces which are new to the choir, it has an extensive repertoire (some of it from the Clifton Cathedral days) which can be pulled out and performed on very little rehearsal.

It certainly deserves its place on 'Let the Peoples Sing', but its conductor has good contacts at the BBC and it frequently appears on radio and TV. Exultate appeared on Songs of Praise a couple of years ago, singing in a church in Bath, which caused some upset to local choirs which felt that it implied that there weren't choirs in Bath good enough to do this.

One choir member had quite an entertaining blog a few years ago, but this was discouraged and they don't sing with the choir now. A shame, because well-written posts about what a choir does can be a real promotional asset (provided they don't spill the wrong kind of beans!)

[exultatesingers]

Delighted to see that this competition is getting a little notice on the board. Just to correct and clarify a couple of points in Post 6, as it sounds as though some assumptions are being made about Exultate Singers!

It certainly deserves its place on 'Let the Peoples Sing', but its conductor has good contacts at the BBC and it frequently appears on radio and TV.

We have indeed, although none of these are related to the choir being chosen for the Let The Peoples Sing competition. The BBC was at pains to point out that the tracks they received for the selection process were blind auditioned and they did not know the names of the choirs until the decisions about which ones to put forward had been made.

Exultate appeared on Songs of Praise a couple of years ago, singing in a church in Bath, which caused some upset to local choirs which felt that it implied that there weren't choirs in Bath good enough to do this.

Actually the way it worked with Songs of Praise for this particular programme was the other way around - they wanted to use Exultate Singers, and the choice of venue followed on from that. There had been a programme not all that long before from Bristol so they chose to film it in Bath instead.

One choir member had quite an entertaining blog a few years ago, but this was discouraged and they don't sing with the choir now. A shame, because well-written posts about what a choir does can be a real promotional asset (provided they don't spill the wrong kind of beans!)

We have never asked any choir member to change or delete any blog post, have never discouraged anyone from blogging or made any decisions on choir membership based on whether or not they blog!

We have recently had a few students singing with us, but the overall make up of the choir still embraces a fantastic mix of youth and experience - our youngest member is 18, the oldest late fifties.