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Barbershop, Bagpipes and Inspiration

To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it. But we must not drift or lie at anchor - Oliver Wendell Holmes

It's the choir off-season at the moment, a time to rest, reflect and generally restore, ready to launch back into the new season. We have some very good concerts before Christmas, a tour to Krakow next summer and the Male Choir competition in Torquay in March 2012.

There is no doubt in my mind that the choir has had a good year just past, some splendid performances and excellent audiences but an organisation must look to the future, for unless we move forward there is no doubt we will drift back.

Deliberately, I have been looking around at other musical orgainisations, looking for inspiration, looking for a way forward, looking for a way to help us improve our music making. I haven't yet found it but I think I have recognised some of the things our beloved male choir genre is missing, but more of that in a minute. Let me share two inspirations that I have had recently.

I spent last Saturday watching the World Pipe Band Championships on the BBC Scotland live internet feed; my best friend at school played (and still plays) in The Gilnahirk Pipe Band and I remember the thrill of hearing these wonderful organisations in my teens and early twenties.

The winners were The Field Marshal Montgomery Pipe Band from Northern Ireland, one of the leading pipe bands in the world today; it is arguably the most influential and successful pipe band ever. Led by Pipe Major Richard Parkes MBE and Drum Sergeant Keith Orr, the band has won every major championship title available to them, including seven World Pipe Band Championships and a colossal 43 major championship titles.

Watch the video below, listen to the incredible musicality of these guys and girls - they are just like you and me, ordinary people, with real jobs and real lives. The difference is that they have achieved absolute excellence in their hobby, in their passion, in their amateur music making. They are clearly enjoying everything that they do, clearly having a ball doing it.

So, what makes them so good. Well, they practice, they practice hard, they are very dedicated to their art. They are gifted but all gifts need to be nurtured and in Richard Parkes they have inspirational leadership from a gifted musician. They are very clearly proud of their achievements - but I am guessing that their pride comes from knowing that they do their very best every time they step on to the grass. Importantly (to me) is that whilst I have focussed on the winners at "The Worlds" - there were probably another 50 bands (in all the various grades) there, all competing, all striving to improve, all constantly learning from their experiences, learning from the judges comments and drinking in the experience of hearing the best in the world and wanting to be like them.

There is an overarching organisation in the form of the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association. The RSPBA is the recognised Centre of Excellence for the promotion and development of Pipe Band Music internationally. Its services and facilities are noted on their website and include: education, training and certification in Piping, Drumming, Drum Majoring and Pipe Band Adjudication; an annual Summer School, an Academy of Pipe Band Musicianship; setting standards of Pipe Band competition performance. Please note it does not mention promoting Scottish Culture or promoting the constant playing of nostalgic hymns and arias. Excellence, training, education, adjudicating, schooling are the key words. Rather than constantly looking back the male choir genre needs to look forward, we, at Bournemouth Male Voice Choir must strive to do that. Only by embracing these kinds of values will we be able to inspire younger men (like those in the Pipe-Band world) to experience the best singing of their lives - in a men's choir.

Another inspiration came closer to home, a new friend and member of Bournemouth Male Voice Choir David Wood is also the new Director of Ocean Harmony, a Barbershop group from Southampton. David, very kindly, invited me to visit one of their rehearsals and I really enjoyed hearing this group. What was fascinating for me was that the "Guild of Judges" had sent one of their representatives to the rehearsal to discuss the groups recent performance at "Convention". A screen was set up, the choruses performance was projected on to it and played through speakers and the adjudicator had to talk about why they had given the scores they had. What a fabulous idea! No more giving the cup to a choir because they come from the same place as you! The judge had to stand by their adjudication.

I got chatting to the members and the judge and I was very impressed by their striving to improve, very much like the members of Bournemouth Male Voice Choir, but very interestingly this endeavour was well supported by the overarching organisation, The British Association of Barbershop Singers. I have taken some words from their mission statement and they are remarkably similar to those above from the RSPBA in so many ways. "Embrace and perform music predominantly in the barbershop style, and in a broad range of other a cappella styles. Through the educational and coaching opportunities available in the Society, they continually improve their public and contest performances. Each chapter embraces and performs a cappella music, our chapters are leaders in the musical life of their community, employing and enjoying the same educational opportunities for improvement available to quartets and all singers. District and international conventions, festivals, and educational conferences incorporate contests, activities, and training sessions to meet the needs of our membership and their families. We continually strive for improvement in individual, quartet, chorus and Society activities, performances, and events…….. largest supporter of vocal music education in the world, the alliance has formed strong partnerships with school choral groups, music educators, and their organizations."

So again, an organisation interested in eduction, coaching, improvement, conventions, festivals, contests, training, partnerships....

I am convinced that the groundwork we are putting in place, improving standards, singing new music and looking forward to a future that in fresh rather that looking backwards to a nostalgic past that never really existed is the right thing to do.

The 2011/2012 season will see the choir ratchet up its performance standard and strive to be the best it can be, why not get involved with us? The Male Choir genre offers a unique opportunity for men to perform wonderful music from a wide range of styles.

If you are a voice coach, why not offer to help with coaching?

If you are a choreographer why not help us with our stagecraft?

If you are a composer show us your music!

If you are a singer who lives in Dorset and wants to be the best you can be - why not join us!?

I'll leave you with a Barbershop choir singing one of our new pieces the delicious "Lux Aurumque" by Eric Whitacre - watch this then drop me an email (musicaldirector@bournemouthmalechoir.co.uk ) telling me how you can help drive forward the best sort of ensemble singing - "Men's Choirs"

Now the years are rolling by me, they are rocking evenly and I am older than I once was and younger than I’ll be, that’s not usual

Far too long since the last blog post, in fact every post I write here seems to begin with that sentiment, an excuse for inaction will inevitably follow but today I won’t bother, time to cut to the chase as time moves on and all this chatter isn't getting the photocopier oiled is it? I will however pause to apologise for the slightly confessional feel of this email but hey, we are supposed to be touchy feely artists aren’t we?

The time has come; some might say the time is long past, for us to decide what we are as a choir and how we move forward. In many ways this has been not so much a decision as an inexorable progression towards where we are today and where I hope we will be in the future.

Firstly, some background – I have been conducting male voice choirs for twenty years, I am steeped in the lore of the genre, know the repertoire intimately and genuinely believe that the opportunity for men to sing together in TTBB choirs is a valuable artistic outlet (can you sense a silent but…?) OK then you spotted it.. I genuinely believe that the genre needs to find its way into the twenty first century so that it remains relevant and something that twenty-first century men want to be part of. Our PRO John Coates undertook a major SWOT survey among our choir and supporters in 2010 that in lots of different ways told us that the image of male choirs could be off putting for many people who, unlike me, we not steeped in the history and tradition of the genre.

There is something uniquely moving about the passion combined with sensitivity that a group of men singing together can achieve, so why are so few men in England getting involved. Importantly why are so few younger men (30-50) getting involved? I hear all sorts of stories from choirs across the UK about how they are getting more young members and they have 70 members and all is rosy in their gardens but when you go on the websites and look at the pictures the story is different. For me, some of our problems lie in the repertoire.

Male choirs tried to re-invent themselves in the 1980’s and 1990’s with floods of new arrangements of what were described as popular songs but their original artists made most of those songs famous before I was born and even when they were current they were older in style and hardly contemporary in nature. This isn’t in any sense decrying our beautiful arrangement of “Softly as I leave you” for example but I sometimes look down concert programmes and think that its really all terribly similar and wonder how long male choirs can exist without an injection of new music to bring a new energy to our musical lives. This is not a new idea, when you look back at male choir programmes from the early 1900’s they were regularly singing new music by Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Herbert Howells, Daniel Protheroe and the like. So for us, I am treading my own path on this one, its not necessarily better but I do think it suits us better.

I think if I was sitting in South Wales writing this piece I would probably think differently, there is a rich cultural tradition of folk song, hymn tunes and the like which have an intrinsic part of the male choir tradition and if I directed one of those great male choirs from Wales I would want to preserve the tradition, and indeed I know that some choirs in Wales are looking at new music from Welsh composers. Here in Bournemouth, and I sense in England as a whole, things are different, so Deus Sautis remains due to its incredible quality but I can’t see much space for many more of these hymn tunes in our programmes due to them perhaps not having as much relevance to an English choir or audience. More importantly, this gives us space for musical items and texts that aren't so much “male voice choir” as music for a choir that happens to be of men’s voices.

The new world seems to be leading the way for new innovative music for men’s voices; Eric Whitacre, Morten Lauridsen, Randall Stroope, Timothy Takach and many others are writing interesting, quality music and here in Britain Alan Simmons, Goff Richards, Christopher Wiltshire and others have produced some excellent new music for TTBB; the problem is that we (the English choirs for men) aren’t crying out for new compositions, we’re broadly not commissioning new works and therefore market forces intervene – no demand - no supply? The big American men’s choruses (particularly the gay men’s choirs) are regularly supporting the composition of new music. But, doing our best here in Bournemouth we are at the moment however working on Lux Aurumque and The Seal Lullaby by Eric Whitacre, a brand new piece by Timothy Takach as well as original music by Poulenc, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Alan Simmons and Goff Richards and are just about the start two new pieces by contemporary British composers who are less well known.

But modern choirs cannot live by the more serious music alone, lollipops are very popular with our audiences but to attract modern audiences and new members to secure the future of the genre we need to make sure those lollipops are acceptable to modern palates. So rather than Matt Monroe and the like our popular selections in Bournemouth are Take That, Ronan Keating, Seal and Toto with the occasional nod to great doo-wop groups like The Marcels – hopefully this is the combination of old and new that will help us secure our future – a choir of men rather than a male voice choir?

By introducing new music, arrangements of contemporary popular songs and the like we can attract an audience and members to be part of our choir – and when they are part of our great tradition we can show them the beauty of Llef, The Old Woman and that wonderful traditional range of male choir music – not in isolation but as part of a balanced musical diet. A mission statement of “Proud of our past, looking to the future”

I leave these two thoughts with you – next time the advertisements come on don’t go and make a cup of tea - have a watch! I am surprised by just how many advertisements show scenes of people of all ages together in groups who end up singing (like the one set in the airport) – it makes me think that there might still be a future for singing in choirs – these advertising companies carefully research before they make these shorts, a huge amount of money is spent – they won’t present an unappealing scenario for their client.

And finally, can you name one star, one film, one series or one red carpet show when the male protagonist (of any age) is wearing a blazer with shiny buttons, a club tie and slacks? This isn’t about age – look at the clothes every panel show, awards ceremony etc puts their leading men in, they are timeless, clean and crisp looking – what sixty year old man (or younger even) wouldn’t want to look as good as George Clooney does in that coffee advertisement?

A lot to think of, I am a very, very imperfect vessel for the challenges ahead for the genre, do you want to get involved in moving singing for men forward?