Love Music Community Choir celebrates its 10th birthday
10 years ago I went to the first meeting of a new community choir. Its publicity stated that in partnership with Edinburgh Council, the Love Music Community Choir would rehearse in the Usher Hall. I had enjoyed singing in choirs at school, had appeared with the University Choir at the same venue in the late 1960s, and had seen many professional and amateur choirs perform at classical concerts there over the years. Another attraction and, with great doubts about the range of my allegedly alto voice, was the lack of auditions! The voice is still not up to much, but I got there and stuck around, and after 10 years went again last week to the first rehearsal of the Spring Term, looking forward to learning more songs.
The choir was the brainchild of conductor, Stephen Deazley, the accomplished choral conductor and musical arranger and Ruth Davie, Love Music’s Managing Director. Accompanying us on piano, was Dave Milligan, multi-talented pianist with a number of jazz albums to his credit. From the beginning it’s been immensely popular. The original quota was exceeded before the first rehearsal, and the numbers continued to rise until Stephen was proud to declare that we were the largest community choir in the UK. There have always been lots of altos and sopranos, but over the years the tenor section, including women tenors, and the bass section have both reached respectable proportions
Our first song was Rogers and Hammerstein’s ‘Shall We Dance?’ from ‘The King and I’ - back by popular demand and in a new more complex arrangement by Stephen in this anniversary term. We also sang two American folksongs, ‘All the Pretty Horses’ and ‘Motherless Children’, and, as Richard Thomson was appearing at the Usher Hall that term, two of his songs, ‘Blackleg Miner’ and ‘Keep Your Distance’.
The repertoire has since then been expanded in several ways – our folk songs have regularly included songs in other languages and new songs in the folk idiom, especially with Karine Polwart, who has been a regular inspirational collaborator. Music from sixties onwards has included Johnny Cash, the Beach Boys, the Beatles, Blondie and - here I show my staid musical tastes - other artists from the eighties and nineties - of whom I’d previously known nothing. On more than one occasion, it seemed that I was the only member of the choir who failed to soar effortlessly into the chorus of a new song, more familiar to everyone else than the National Anthem. Many of these songs in Stephen’s excellent arrangements became personal favourites – though I never became a fan of the sessions we did with a beatboxer!
My fellow choir members come from all kinds of musical backgrounds, and many of them sing in other choirs and regularly attend musical events of all genres. Those who weren’t familiar with classical music showed themselves more open-minded than me when it came to learning our first classical number, ‘Lacrimosa’ from Mozart’s Requiem. It was the hardest piece we’d learned up till then, but it rapidly became a firm favourite, with many members saying how moving they found the experience of singing it. From then we’ve regularly sung classical choruses and adaptations of operatic arias by, among others, Handel, Verdi, Beethoven, Puccini, Elgar and Carl Orff – getting that first alto note in ‘Oh Fortuna’ was the hardest thing I ever did in choir.
For several years we continued our practice of singing songs by artists appearing at the Usher Hall, and this led in July 2013 to our first flash mob event on the steps of the Usher Hall before Blondie’s concert. We’d learned ‘Sunday Girl’ and ‘Dreaming’ and sang these to a curious and appreciative audience in the pouring rain. The following spring term, in darkness, the Rufus Wainwright crowd were treated to a rendition of ‘Vibrate’. Rumour has it that both Debbie Harry and Rufus Wainwright came out incognito to hear their respective events! A more refined flash mob appeared inside the Usher Hall at an RSNO concert in June 2014 before their performance of Beethoven’s Ninth, when members of the choir rose from their seats in the stalls to sing the ‘Ode to Joy’ in German, accompanied by the Usher Hall organ. This was a surprise to the orchestra and the audience, some of whom stood up too, and it was so well received that a newspaper critic wrote of the “delightful singing of a German choir.”
Nearly every term there’s been a concert in the Usher Hall, attended by an enthusiastic audience of families and friends. At these we’ve collaborated with other musicians, professional and amateur. The Junior Choir formed in 2017 for pupils aged 8-12 from schools all over the city has contributed to the fun and excitement and put us all to shame with their ability to learn dance and clapping routines. In 2018 we had a special collaboration with other Edinburgh choirs: Sangstream, Song Tribe, The Soundhouse Choir and the Edinburgh Gay Men’s Chorus. Another memorable collaboration was with the Dave Milligan Trio and Su-a Lee on saw (yes!) in a mash-up of Blondie’s ‘Call Me’ and Delia Derbyshire’s ‘I’m the Doctor’ – authentic Radiophonic Workshop “woo-woos”.
In March 2020 we’d planned another concert with Edinburgh choirs, but that was an early victim of lockdown cancellations. The choir was, however, up and running online in time for a summer term. As well as the front of house team of Stephen and Dave, the choir administrators all did even harder work to get this up and running – an hour long rehearsal online takes much more preparation than a two hours in the hall. Extra audio resources plus a team of four singers helped many of us to stick with the choir from 2020-2021. In our October 2019 concert we’d had a lovely collaboration with mezzo Beth Taylor, who sang the solo part in an adaptation of J S Bach’s ‘Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring’, with new words by Alexander McCall Smith. In Autumn 2020, with choirs still forbidden to rehearse live in the UK we were joined by Beth again from her flat in Berlin from where she astonished us by describing her rehearsals for the forthcoming production of ‘Die Walküre’. You can see her in the video of our online performance here. Love Music Community Choir sing Schubert's Ave Maria - YouTube
In-person choir resumed in 2021, for the first terms socially distanced and still with the option on joining in on Zoom or YouTube. The LMCC team have done a remarkable job of continuing to make the choir available to all, including those whose health continues to make them vulnerable to infection. Some distanced seating is available in the hall, and online participation remains an option.
A number of members have joined and left over the years but many of us have attended all or most of the terms since 2013. I’ve described some of the fun moments which make all the rehearsals seem worthwhile, but gradually I’ve realised that it’s the rehearsals that are the important thing, getting to grips with a piece of music, whether previously familiar or not, learning the parts, and then the thrill of hearing these parts fitting together in over 200 voices. There’s nothing quite like it!
With many thanks to the LMCC team, especially Hannah for help in writing this article.
Further information: more videos of the choir in the Usher Hall and during lockdown can be found at www.youtube.co/@lovemusicscot/playlists . These include two of the flash mobs mentioned above.
If you are interested in joining the choir online or in person, you can join the waiting list here www.choir.lovemusic.org.uk/join
Look out for news about our next concert on 6th March in the Usher Hall with the Junior Choir and the Newtongrange Silver Band at www.lovemusic.org.uk/events
