Day 40 of lockdown - all those musicians out there are adapting to the times. Social distancing and choirs are about as mutually exclusive as it gets. There are numerous online activities, though, which while not the same as being physically together, are going some way towards plugging the gap and keeping people in touch with their music-making. I’m giving online singing lessons - as this picture captures - both to private pupils and Cambridge students, which is a new challenge and rather fun!  The social isolation which we’re all getting on with has actually been an opportunity for me to get back to listening to music more deeply and enjoyably. A bit of timelessness rather than the pre-Covid mental rush...Read More

As a professional tenor, conductor, and pianist I’ve been very fortunate to experience a huge diversity of concerts, recordings and rehearsals at the highest level both in the UK and in many international venues. My career in choirs began in earnest at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, under Simon Preston, as well as joining the Monteverdi Choir under John Eliot Gardiner and the newly-formed Sixteen under Harry Christophers. This was a great and formative time, learning with such inspiring leaders, but it has been the subsequent 400 months of being in the country’s only full-time professional choir, the BBC Singers, which has really shaped my knowledge of the choral world in all its depth and splendor. Adapting technically to the challenge...Read More

The impact on the choral world of the pandemic has been extreme and I for one was distraught at the loss of a hobby that brings so much joy to my life. My heart goes out to those for whom it is also their profession. However, what has shone through this crisis is the determination of the choral community to pull through. The internet abounds with virtual performances, constructed by music directors and sound engineers by laboriously stitching together the individual tracks recorded by each singer. At the start of lockdown I dabbled in a few of these online recordings. It is astonishing to think of the effort that has to go into creating something that just a few months ago...Read More

Like everyone else, since March I’ve been switching from finding how remarkably normal things have been with the freedom of not having a regular busy weekly timetable to realising the seriousness of the situation with the future road plans being terribly uncertain – especially for us choral singers who I fear will be one of the last to get back to any sort of workable normal. I have found solace in using the time to reflect and readjust my life. I decided to take on a project I would have not have had time to invest in during normal times: I have been learning Bach’s ‘Goldberg’ Variations for harpsichord – currently just over half-way on variation 19. My other challenges...Read More

I was delighted to be reminded yet again, of the privilege it was for me to have been a chorister there from 1954-1958, on the Cantoris side, under the watchful eye of the amazing Director of Music, organist, composer of ‘Adam Lay Y Bounden’ and legend, Dr.Ord. I loved my time at Kings’ and not a day goes by when I don’t think of the huge influence it still has over me. Boris was an old-school Kappelmeister, strict but fair, with an amazing ear for tuning, diction, and the tone of your voice. He was never aggressive or rude, but his experience was enormous, and he could also be great fun. We all knew he was the boss and tried all...Read More

It seems a long time since our December concert, way back in those delightful Covid-free days. What would we not give to be singing together again? This question has been very much on my mind during lockdown as choirs have always been so central to my life. I first started singing in a choir at the age of 10 and have more or less never been out of one since. It is not uncommon for me to be singing four or five times a week in normal times (just ask my long-suffering husband). So the void in my life without choirs is massive and aching, as I’m sure it is for many of you. But it doesn’t do to moan...Read More

My day job has been particularly irksome during lockdown, a situation exacerbated by the absence of the usual consolation of singing with the St Albans Cathedral Choir at weekends. So along with my fellow lay clerks I was very happy to learn that sung worship was to be reintroduced over the summer, albeit in an extremely modified form to begin with. We were invited to make ourselves available for specific weekends in July and August, from which volunteer list a duty roster was drawn up, comprising precisely one singer per weekend. I was assigned August 29th and 30th, which included the privilege of providing music for the first wedding to take place at the cathedral since the easing of the...Read More

Our December concert was a proper challenge in true MacKenzie style. Five of Sir James MacMillan’s gorgeous Strathclyde Motets, plus four challenging Christmas and Advent motets by Victoria, Sweelinck, Scheidt and Peter Phillips – all this was crunchy enough, and the first half of the concert went off really well. Gerry Ruddock and Tim Hayward on piccolo trumpets accompanied us in Scheidt’s In Dulci Jubilo, making a glorious and electrifying sound, and Tim also played from the pulpit in MacMillan’s In splendoribus sanctorum. And the two of them were joined by our own Peter Twitchin moving seamlessly from singing tenor in the choir to play the chamber organ in Vivaldi’s lively Concerto for two trumpets. The main work in the...Read More

In July 2019, 22 Voix de Vivre singers set out for Kecskemét in Hungary to take part in the International Kodaly Music Festival, a great honour for us and a landmark in the choir’s history as it was our first ever foreign tour. Most of us flew in, and some intrepid travellers arrived by train, late for the first beer. We were superbly hosted by two local chamber choirs – Cantus Nobilis, who we already knew from their visit to the UK two years ago when we shared a concert, and the newly-formed KEK (Kecskeméti Énekes Kör) choir with their charismatic conductor Peter Erdei. KEK welcomed us to our concert venue, the baroque Piarist church, with two fabulous songs by...Read More

On the 13th July I took part, as is my great pleasure to do when required, in Voix de Vivre’s concert of great German choral music. Reflecting on the evening’s experience, I found myself asking what exactly is the value of such concert events. Not that I am in any doubt of their absolute value, but in this age when music is more often experienced as a pre-packaged consumer item, and with audiences for even the more familiar orchestral repertoire dwindling in number, how can we devotees of choral repertoire best communicate our enthusiasm for it to audiences and singers alike? Leaving aside for now the widespread decline in appreciation of all forms of what used to be called ‘classical...Read More