Medina Community Choir on stage with Fatboy Slim at the Common People Festival in Southampton in May 2015. (I’m back row far left.)
Joining a choir was my new year resolution in 2015 and it’s one of the few I’ve ever stuck to. I was 54, I’d been through the menopause and was feeling ropey. Thyroid surgery had altered my range, so I could no longer hit the highest notes when warbling along to Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush. My speaking voice was also suffering. I felt croaky whenever I had to speak in public, which made me self-conscious.
Socially I was in the doldrums. My adult daughters had flown the nest a decade before; my son was at secondary school. I have a wonderful family, but there was no longer anything “grounding” me in the local community. The social networks that formed during my son’s early school years had evaporated. I work part-time from home, so my “commute” is literally a 30-second journey up the stairs, with the only office gossip coming from my partner. We’ve worked together since our daughters were little.
Medina Community Choir is one of the largest in my area, open to all ages. There are no auditions. Some members can sight-read music, others are complete beginners. Several families have three generations singing in the choir. For some, choir IS their family, the chance to socialise and sing once or twice a week and be part of a group.
I’d sung in church as a child and joined a women’s choir for a while when I lived in London, but it was 15 years since I’d exercised my vocal cords in a group. At my first rehearsal I was incredibly nervous, but I threw myself into it, learning as much of the repertoire as I could. My very first gig as a newbie, four months in, was guesting with superstar DJ Fatboy Slim (Norman Cook) in front of 30,000 people when he headlined the Common People festival in Southampton in May 2015. He invited the choir to open his set with our director’s own choral arrangement of Right Here, Right Now segueing into Eat, Sleep, Rave, Repeat and close it with Praise You. What a buzz!
In the ten years since, I’ve sung everything: classical, pop, gospel, show tunes, sacred music. And I’ve grown older with the choir. There is no sense of being invisible as I age. Seeing the same friendly faces each week, I know more about some of my fellow choristers than I do about members of my own family.
On stage there’s a dress code, but at rehearsals appearances don’t matter as long as you remember to use your whole face while you’re singing (a surprisingly tricky habit to learn!). I can turn up in paint-spattered jeans if I want – no-one is judging. We grab a cuppa in the tea break and catch up with what’s going on in each other’s lives, the ups and downs. Each vocal part has its own WhatsApp group to share essential choir messages, but that, too, is a place for mutual support.
Choir has provided a soundtrack to accompany me through profound life-changes during the past decade: celebrating the arrival of four grandchildren; and grieving for my music-loving parents, who died two months apart in 2021. During the pandemic, our choir director kept up regular Zoom sessions online and then arranged socially distanced rehearsals once it became possible to venture out, so it remained a valuable part of my routine. It’s not overstating it to say it was a sanity-saver.
Outside Le Mans Cathedral, August 2024
There have been some amazing opportunities to travel. In 2019 I joined the choir on a week-long trip to New York for a massed choral concert at Carnegie Hall, singing John Rutter’s Magnificat. Every two years, a coachload of us head to France, performing gospel repertoire in churches and cathedrals in the Loire Valley. One member summed it up as “like a school trip on steroids”. I wrote about it on our return last summer:
Here’s how I described some of the impact our music had on the audiences:
A waiter who served some of us at lunch in Tours said he was sorry he couldn’t come along to our performance, as he had worked sixty days straight and this was his first night off.
He showed up in the first row of the audience that night and said to our director afterwards that, though a choir concert was not his usual thing, he felt by the end that he had had sixty days of rest.
A man who had recently come out of a psychiatric unit following a suicide attempt was encouraged to attend our concert by a nun who was mentoring him while he adjusted to independent living.
He told our director afterwards that he was unsure why he was still alive, but during the concert he realised this was why. Our music gave his life meaning.
Each of the three venues was stunning and atmospheric. In Le Mans cathedral a bat emerged as we sang, flitting to and fro across the arched ceilings.
When we left, the entire cathedral was bathed in a spectacular moving light show. It wasn’t for our benefit – it happens throughout August – but it was a magical end to our performance.
The experience left us all on a high.
Tragically, just a couple of weeks after we returned home, one of our talented and popular tenors died following a heart attack. At his funeral, we were invited by his widow to reprise some of those same gospel songs we’d sung with him on tour, an emotionally charged experience for us all. It was a reminder to take nothing for granted.
My own health has benefited massively from regular singing and from being part of the choir community. My speaking voice is stronger, my breathing steadier, and my vocal range has improved so I can almost reach the highest notes again, though I’m sticking with the lower-pitched soprano twos. There’s also the welcome mental challenge of memorising lyrics, as we perform “off-book”.
Some people will get a similar sense of community through belonging to a church or a sports club or an art class, but for me, choir is the place I feel at home, visible and valued, singing together, learning together, ageing together.
So here’s to ten years of singing in the choir. Bring on the next decade!
Light show at Le Mans Cathedral, August 2024
I didn't expect to be so moved by this piece Wendy! I almost feel a glow from just reading about what this has done for you and others. How lovely to know how much a relatively simple concept can do for people.
I'm so happy you have this in your life. What a wonderful way to nurture community and share the magic of music with so many people!