Blog post #41 - ChoirKate - Part 1

It was inevitable really. I mean, there was my mum; my songbird mummy; always with a song in her heart, a melody on her lips and her wonderful, wonderful voice, singing, singing, singing. Tra-la-la with all the twiddly bits and the trimmings!
As a young adult studying voice at Trinity College in London, I came to realise that she was singing
Puccini, Verdi, Schubert and Strauss (both brands)

Many of you know that story well enough.

Fewer know that my daddy would ask his beloved of an evening, “well Pam, what would you like for this evening’s concert?”
“Oh! I think some Beethoven would be lovely. Maybe the Pastoral Symphony?”
And so my dad would get out the three 78s which constituted Ludwig’s 6th effort, wind up His Master’s Voice phonograph, place a yellow short score on the music stand, raise his baton and the London Symphony Orchestra would do his bidding!

So there you have it, all that singing and conducting going on, how could I help but end up doing the choir thing?

Of course, there was no call for me to be in front of a bunch of singers in my growing up years, (no extravagant House Music competions for budding young conductors to try out their waving back then), but I was always in whatever choir was going on at school.

At high school that really kicked in for me. You know singing “real” stuff. I remember the first choir practice at Exmouth Grammar having the octavo of Handel’s Where E’er You Walk in my hands, loving that middle section where Handel’s genius writing literally “rises” to the occasion and also enjoying the sweet lilt of Quel Est C’est Odeur Agréable, which we prepared for the Carol Service.
I loved Christmas, learning all the carols with the descants soaring.
My sister had us trailing around the streets singing them door to door, to the delight of many hearing our harmony. We always gave them a rousing “We Wish You A Merry Christmas,” with a counter melody on the “good tidings” bit thrown in for good measure, as our neighbours popped pennies into the pot.

In my middle teens I wasn’t a great fan of school, but of course I still loved singing in the choir and by then I was strumming my guitar and getting folks to sing with me, making up harmonies as we went. Plenty of that went on with my sister round the gospel circuit too.

I remember there were actually a number of us at school who were pretty good singers and our music teacher taught us the best part of Britten’s Ceremony of Carols with a professional harpist brought in for the Carol Service at St John’s in Glastonbury.
I was picked to sing the alto solo for That Yongë Childe!
Britten’s masterpiece has played an important part in my life as you will later see.

As is my wont with these meanderings here’s Where E’er You Walk.
I’m not sure it’s the same version we sang, but you get the gist.
We just wore our regular old school uniform to sing though. (Just as well, maybe?😆)

https://youtu.be/VviT8UbJN7M?si=eHaHwIwsWB55v-0y


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