Our Experiences of Singing
Tideswell Male Voice Choir in our Haiti appeal concert at
St John’s Church, Buxton.
The choir ran a Come and Sing project in 2010; this is referred to in some of the entries below – Ed
What makes singing so exciting? Here’s the story of one choirman:
I had lived in the Buxton area for just over 2 years, and although I’d sung in church choirs for years, I hadn’t sung for about 3 years and had never sung in a Male Voice Choir, despite being a lover of music. In April 2010, I read in the local press what I can only describe as a challenge.
The Musical Director and the Officers of Tideswell MVC had said, “We are looking for a group of around 40 male voices to form a choir. If you’re interested – COME AND SING.”
Never being one to pass up a challenge, and realising that I was missing choral singing, I went to the inaugural meetings and found after the second one I was ‘in’. This was the start of a gruelling but very interesting 6 months. Our first challenge was to come in 3 months when “You’ll be singing in St John’s Church for the Buxton Fringe.” Our thoughts were that we would be nowhere near ready to perform in public, not only alongside the famous Tideswell MVC, but ON OUR OWN AS WELL. I must admit that Dennis seemed to have much more faith in our abilities than we did. To be fair, however, he openly told us that it would be hard work, with him as a hard task master. It was, but nobody had told me that it was so much FUN as well.
Our first performance at the Fringe was a little nail-biting, but passed off well. “Now we can get down to work on the real thing!” said Dennis. This real thing was to be joining with TMVC, a couple of local Youth Choirs and some West End stars and performing at the Buxton Opera House. It consisted of rehearsals, breathing techniques, dancing routines and the like. Completely different from donning a Cassock and Surplice which gave some anonymity. We later heard the word choreography and learned what it meant.
However, the day finally dawned when it would soon be ‘curtain up’. What a way to start! We were posed and had to hold the pose with simply a turn of the head for what seemed half the first number, where everybody invited the audience to Come to the Cabaret. As we left the stage to applause and cheers, we had no time to think about the next part of the show, and also no time to dwell on our next number. Fortunately, as we waited a little nervously in the wings, we received a ringing endorsement from the MC and cheers from the crowd. Christopher struck up the introduction, and eight of us entered from four points of the stage to take up position Centre Stage. No time to hesitate, we small band of Top Tenors were into You’ll Never Walk Alone to be sung all the way through, before we were joined by the rest of the band to finish the number. The rest of the programme seemed to flash by, and we were into our final number, received with rapturous applause. Our first true public performance was over – we had done it! We staggered dazedly into the Octagon for the after-show party, to be greeted by family and friends and receive their plaudits.
Two highlights for me personally, sat there in something of a daze: up dashed my daughter, grabbed me round my shoulders and kissed me! And then shoved the programme in front of me and said “Can I have your autograph, please?” The second was my son-in-law, who I later discovered had some previous form in stage craft, but is not normally the gushing type. He stood me up, and rather solemnly shook hands, then hugged me, telling me how marvellous the show had been.
The opinions of all my family and friends, most of whom have had some amateur experience, was that the whole show had been amazing.
As Dennis had told us, it is now Wednesday, and I think the adrenaline is starting to ebb a little. My own overall thoughts now are “What's next? This can’t be the end.”
I would like to thank all the people involved, but along with Dennis and Christopher, I would like to thank 2 marvellous groups of chaps – Come and Sing who have been a pleasure to work with, and I hope more is to come, and the lads from Tideswell who have helped and encouraged us throughout. Thank you all!
EH 27/10/10
And here’s another man’s story...
I joined TMVC in March 2010, inspired by hearing the choir sing at the Buxton Opera House the previous October.
At that concert an announcement was made about the Come and Sing! project, due to start in the new year. Having not sung formally since leaving school in 1968, I thought that might be an ideal way of dipping a toe in the water to find out if I could still sing well enough to join the choir, and how much I would enjoy it. This plan was scuppered, however, by rehearsal night being Friday, which I couldn’t make with any regularity. And so, encouraged by the positivity of Dennis Kay (the Musical Director) and all the members to whom I had spoken on the ’phone and at the C&S introductory evening, ‘dipping a toe’ turned into jumping in with both feet and joining the Choir.
I rather naively hoped that reading music and singing would be like riding a bike – I’d be rusty, sure, but it would soon come back. It took about half an hour at my first rehearsal to realise that this was more than a tad optimistic. Breath control, voice production technique, facial expression, pronunciation! There was a lot more to this singing lark than I’d appreciated – certainly to singing to the Choir’s and Dennis’s standards – and that’s without learning the words and music to sing a repertoire of some 50 songs without a score! Was I sure about this?
Three hours on – What a great night! I’ve found the people of the Peak District in general very welcoming since I moved here in July 2009, but this was perhaps the friendliest and most helpful welcome I’ve received anywhere, both in the rehearsal room and in The Star afterwards. And the immediate thrill of being in the middle of harmonised male voices was something else, even if I wasn’t contributing anything at that stage.
Five months on – any qualms are completely long gone.
Under Dennis’s excellent and persistent tuition, basic techniques seem to be developing, although they’re taking time to become ingrained habits and still want to disappear if concentration wavers or is centred on learning the nuts and bolts of new pieces.
I’ve painfully absorbed enough words and music to enable me to thoroughly enjoy singing in half a dozen or so concerts. To date these have been mainly in churches, but I’m looking forward with anticipation to singing at the more varied and larger venues in which the Choir performs, especially ‘on tour’.
With the benefit of hindsight, I don’t think that I realised in advance how seriously TMVC take their singing and performing, both individually and as a group, and how committed to it I would have to be. I soon found, however, that Dennis’s great ambitions for the Choir’s future are backed by the members’ keenness for progress and willingness to work to achieve it – both in performance and behind the scenes. There’s an awful lot to be done, in all sorts of ways, if our ambitions are to be realised but I look forward to playing a part in it for, hopefully, many years to come.
But most of all I look forward to the fun, the camaraderie and the fulfilment which the last five months make me sure my years with TMVC will bring.
AWB 11/8/10
Dennis with two C&S project members
And a third...
Just over a year ago I went to a singing workshop run by Dennis Kay at Hope College. It had been fifteen years since I sang in a choir and I wasn’t sure that my voice still worked! Anyway I turned up, joined in and had a good sing. Whether I was any good or not I still didn’t know, but I did know that I enjoyed the group singing. When Dennis suggested that I came along to a few choir practices I thought I’d give it a go.
From my previous experience of three years singing in a mixed voice choir I thought I knew what a choir practice was all about. This was different. A rowdy bunch of characters barging about in a church hall in Tideswell, suddenly brought to order by a loud roar from some sergeant-major type hovering in a corner!
Then the work began – and I mean work. The Musical Director (Dennis Kay) started promptly on time and launched into what was effectively a two-hour singing lesson. He put the choir through its paces; if he wasn’t happy with a phrase or a passage he would explain what they were doing wrong, tell them how to get it right and then re-sing the phrase until he had knocked it into shape. (His techniques to achieve this ranged from outright comedy, through drama to specific threats of physical harm!)
At that first practice I could see just how committed the choir was. All sorts of people from all walks of life, but with one thing in common – they loved to sing and were prepared to work hard at singing better.
The sound the choir made was also different from my previous choir experience. Male voice choirs are something special. The quiet pieces can be breathtaking, making the hairs on the back of your neck stand up; the louder songs can crescendo to a solid, controlled and balanced force that threatens to knock walls down! Being a part of that sound is simply tremendous.
When the practice came to an end there was a resumption of the previous babble of conversation, this time with a repeated theme of ‘are you going down the road?’ This translated into a very enjoyable visit to a local hostelry where the quality of the ale was matched by the quality of banter, friendship and camaraderie.
A year on I’m still learning the ropes, but I’ve enjoyed every minute and wish I had started years back.
EJ 09/03/10
So much to discover, in so short a time
And a fourth...
(This piece was written in preparation for the choir’s Come and Sing! project – Ed)
Hello, my name’s Peter. I joined the choir in June 2008 aged 64. At that time I’d had virtually no experience of singing. No school singing other than (reluctantly) in the daily assembly, a few church services while a teenager, then nothing. Not even singing in the bath! Through all this time I didn’t know whether I could sing or not. I was sometimes accused of having a tuneless whistle, so would my voice turn out the same? I could hear different notes, but I couldn’t tell you what notes they were, and never having heard my own voice I didn’t know where it sat in relation to other men’s.
Fast-forward to spring 2008, when I found myself being attracted into the social circle of the Tideswell choir in their post-practice gatherings at my local. Dennis and Co. talked me into having a go, so eventually I screwed up the courage to turn up at a practice. As I couldn’t reach the upper half of the baritone register I was put in the bass section. There I put down roots and I’ve stayed ever since. It turns out that I’m most definitely a bass. And with a good deal of help from my friends I’ve found that I do have a useful voice after all – phew!
The next hurdle was to learn some lines. The choir has over two hundred scores in its library, and it seemed to me at first that they were intent on going through the lot before I could learn even the first! But with a bit of perseverance I did eventually build up enough confidence to be able to sing a few songs without the scores in hand.
Then in spring 2009 the choir went on a tour of Cornwall, performing eight times in six days. This was just, simply ... magical. The occasion was an international male-voice choral festival involving some 3,000 men and dozens of concerts. What an astonishing experience! I was unprepared for the sheer excitement, sustained day after day as we went to one town after another to sing alongside other choirs, some with next-to-no English. We even sang at the Minack open-air amphitheatre at Land’s End. Mere words cannot relate the thrill of singing in this spectacular place.
Perusing the pages of this website will show what other places we’ve sung in. Every one was special in its way of course, but two highlights stand out for me: the concert at the Octagon with choirs from Hope Valley College, who were wonderful to work with – such energy, enthusiasm and innate talent – and of course the incomparable thrill of singing at Buxton Opera House with Cantamus girls’ choir in our annual Gala Concert. My mother was in the audience this time, and afterwards she seemed to float several inches above the ground, so proud and excited was she that her son had achieved such a feat. So within a year, and in spite of my having more difficulty than most in learning lines, the choir had brought me from nothing at all to being a bit of an asset. And if they did it for me, they can do it for anyone.
Anyone joining [the Come and Sing!] project will of course be free to leave at any time up
to its climax next October, but we all hope that some will want to go further and we hope
they will decide to join us. The choirmen are so warm and friendly, and the comradeship
so fulfilling, the music so rewarding, that I wanted to tell the men around
Buxton what a wonderful time they are guaranteed to have if they will gird their
loins (so to speak), get themselves along and join up to have a go, and –
“Come and Sing!”
PRH 28/11/09
Updated 31 October 2010
