The BAFTA award-winning series, The Choir, on BBC America. I would encourage all of you to check it out. The series is currently filming its 4th season, I believe, and has proven very popular in the UK. In fact, I just read an article that called choirmaster Gareth Malone the real life Will Schuester.
While living in London, my good friend, Emma, convinced me to go with her to this community chorus thing that was a 15 minute walk from our neighborhood. Since I was desperate to start singing again and in the midst of starting to audition again I was happy to tag along. I had pretty low expectations, but figured it could be fun. It turned out to be the London Symphony Orchestra/St. Luke’s Community Chorus under the direction of one Gareth Malone. I think Gareth had just taken over the reins in the previous year and numbers in the chorus were still quite low. There were maybe 40 of us…and at least 10-15 of us headed straight to the pub when rehearsal was over! I loved it and continued singing with them for 3 years until we moved back to the US. By the time I left, there was a wait list to join and an active membership of 120. Gareth is charismatic, exceptionally talented, arranges his own choral music, has a degree from the Royal Academy of Music, and talk about a singing voice! One rehearsal with Gareth and you knew you were coming back for more next week.
During my time with the LSO/St. Luke’s Chorus, Gareth started working on this TV series. The premise of the series is that he goes into an unlikely setting to start a choir. The first season is in a low-income area school and Gareth forms a choir that he wants to take to The Choir Games in China. The second season is in an all-boys school. The third season is about forming a new community chorus in South Oxhey. The LSO/St. Luke’s Chorus is in the first few minutes of the very first episode and if you watch carefully you’ll see me singing away. As choir members we got to enjoy the extra treat of having the kids from the first season sing with us at Christmas time. It was so fun to see how much they had grown as musicians.
It’s a great series and deserves to be seen over here now. Check it out 9pm CDT on BBC America.
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Authored by Amy
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