The following is extracted (with permission) from an article written by John Robert Brown for Classical Music magazine. You can find the full text at John's website here."Some people say that we are just a really good choir. That's the point," explains
Charlie Beale, musical director of the London Gay Men's Chorus
"Our members are dedicated. For an amateur group, we work extremely hard. For instance, we do everything from memory. We are mixed ability. We don't audition. We don't chuck anybody out. We voice test, then we have support mechanisms within the group."
"We've got everything: people who have postgraduate qualifications in vocal performance from American universities, people who have been singing in opera choruses for twelve years professionally, right through to people who've only ever sung in the bath before. That creates a demanding group to run, where people with educational experience are particularly welcome. We have a lot of self help going on within the group. So there are people within the baritones or within the second tenors who'll say: 'Maybe we'll go through that little bit, if anyone would like some help.' We try and run activities that stretch the best singers, give them a challenge. We run voice and music notation workshops, those kinds of things."
"We undertake a balance of community events and big showpiece performances. What we are working on now is to develop that eclecticism, something that can become pick and mix, where you say, 'We'll have a bit of Dowland, then we'll have a show song, then a pop song, some world music, we'll have some improvising'. At the same time we're developing an entirely classical programme. Or rather, classical and improvised, where we'll be commissioning works from new composers, combining some high art sense of purpose and seriousness about what we do with a sense of humour and also a cutting political edge. We want to be surprising. We want to challenge people some of the time."
"The choir is an amazing group of people. If you need a plumber, or you need an architect, or a lawyer, almost certainly there will be someone in the choir who can help. I've worked with choral societies as a conductor before. This is very different, in the sense that it's much more bonded. I think it affects our singing. People say that there's an emotional power about it. No matter what style of music we're singing, they say that there's a sense that the group is very committed to what it's doing. The choir sings with great passion, with an intensity, a conviction. It's something that gay men can do in the evenings that doesn't involve going to smoky bars and clubs. You are in a safe space. You can be yourself. No one's going to attack that in any way."
"Actually, that's not quite true, as there are people who can be quite aggressive, as I'm sure you can imagine."
John Robert Brown is a writer, musician and chairman of the Clarinet and Saxophone Society of Great Britain. As a writer, today John's work appears in many magazines. A selection of his writing appears on his website.
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