Welcome to the 2020 Newsletter
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Bingham and District Choral Society is about to launch its innovative Distance Learning Project, an initiative centred around the Folk Song Sequence composed by Guy Turner and commissioned for our Jubilee Year celebrations in 2021-22. Full details of this and of the Society’s preparations for the Jubilee are included in this Newsletter.
Chair’s Report
This report is usually one of the easier of the Chair’s duties. There would be a brief discussion of past triumphs, mention of anything significant from the AGM and a happy anticipation of concerts and events to come in the new session. I wish.
It is difficult to recall now, but the period from July to February was normal. We welcomed Michael Overbury as our accompanist in September and he has quickly become a (very decorative) part of the furniture. We enjoyed singing Baroque music in Newark Parish Church in November, although we all urgently need to rediscover the art of selling more tickets. The Christmas Concert was a joyous occasion, with the Carnarvon School choir in excellent form. And in January we started rehearsing Brahms’ A German Requiem, in anticipation of a performance with our very good friends from Mansfield Choral Society, in the Minster in May. Also in prospect was Bach’s Mass in B Minor, to be sung with our equally good friends Southwell Choral, in November.
Then along came Corona. Hardly a speck of dust on the horizon in February, by March the virus came to dominate all of our lives and on March 18th we suspended rehearsals.
We still have little idea when ‘normal service’ will be resumed, yet your Committee is 100% determined that we will survive this inconvenience and emerge strongly when circumstances permit. So I will now tell you what we have been doing.
The first thing that seemed important was to maintain contact with all of you, the members, and so the Bingham Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) was born. The BBC broadcast weekly during April, May and June and will now continue fortnightly into the autumn. I know that the broad range of content has been much appreciated. Many people have contributed, but two deserve special thanks, Brad Poulson, our Treasurer and Guy Turner, our MD. Both have given unstintingly of their time and they have shown great ingenuity and inventiveness. And the project continues to rely on Brad (The Controller’s) technical expertise.
At the same time we also set up the Self-Help scheme, which about half of you joined. Its purpose was to ensure that everyone who wished, could have contact with fellow choir members.
Soon after the suspension of rehearsals it became clear that the Brahms concert could not go ahead and then that Bach in November was equally doomed. At the time of this message we have no idea when public concerts will again be permitted. But we are still making plans and we hope to reschedule both these concerts.
The headline feature of this Newsletter is the Distance Learning Project. Brad Poulson’s brainchild, this is centred around the Sequence of British Folk Songs that Guy has recently composed, at our commission. Full details can be found elsewhere in this Newsletter.
For a while we cherished the hope that we would be able to resume rehearsals in September. But since we can’t work towards a concert, we thought lets make a CD of Christmas music. We have done enough ground work to establish that that idea could work. However, Carnarvon School pulled the plug on us, by cancelling our bookings for their Hall until further notice. They are worried about the possibility of cross contamination, which is entirely understandable. All other venues where we might rehearse seem to have similar hiring moratoria in place – unless you know differently??!!
Before we meet again, whenever that might be, we need to address the issue of safety. We are not a young group and it may be that rehearsing together, even with a social distance of 2 metres between us, is too risky. To consider this and other difficult safety questions I have established an autonomous Safety Committee, consisting of Sally Ashton, John Bannister, Judy Unell and (Dr.) Tim Connery. Their considerations will regulate under what conditions we can restart rehearsals when venues become available.
We are not able to make any concrete plans yet for the rest of the 2020 – 2021 season. But we have already given considerable thought to the session 2021 – 22, which will see the 50th anniversary of our foundation. This (fingers crossed) will have two centrepiece concerts, the ‘Last night of the Proms,’ jointly with Mansfield Choral, in the Minster on November 27th next year and Handel’s Messiah, jointly with Newark Choral Society, on April 30th 2022. You have already been involved in the selection of ‘Proms’ music and full details can be found in Guy’s report.(link) Messiah was the first work performed by BDCS, back in 1972. More about our anniversary celebrations can be found in Judy Unell’s article. (link)
We should have had our AGM in May and, not surprisingly our Constitution makes no provision for the effects of a pandemic. Your Committee has unanimously agreed that an AGM will be held as soon as is practicable. Until then, I am pleased to say that all members have agreed to remain in post. Until we are able to hold a General Meeting, all costs will be met from reserves.
We have been saddened by the death of loyal alto Pam Brooks and that of her fellow examiner (auditor) Hugh Holbrook, whose wife Joy continues to sing with us. Our sympathies also went out to Bob Middleton, whose wife died suddenly, and to Sheila Barwick, who lost her husband after a long illness. We are very sad that former Chair Jeff Crampton is seriously ill.
I finish by saying some heartfelt thank-yous, starting with Guy and Michael, who are a wonderful and wonderfully musical combination. I thank Huw Cadwallader and Dr. David Morgan, who are now our examiners. I thank David Atkins for running the 100 Club so smoothly. I thank very many of you, who contribute for example by providing tea and coffee on the rota, or by setting out and putting away chairs, or by helping at concerts, especially at Christmas. I was out of action due to a fall early this year and I want to thank Sally Ashton, Vice Chair, for running things smoothly in my absence. I also want to thank you for all your messages of good will at that time. And lastly and very sincerely I want to thank all of the Committee. There could not be a more hard-working, practical, thoughtful, likeable and considerate bunch of people. You, and I, are lucky to have them.
Richard Joyner
BDCS Distance Learning
‘enabling choir rehearsal from home’
In the absence of regular choir rehearsals during lockdown, many choirs have experimented with remote or ‘virtual’ rehearsals using Zoom or other IT conference facilities. The general experience of most is that while beneficial for keeping in touch with your choral cohort, the singing experience is less satisfying. With that learning in mind, BDCS is about to launch what I describe as ‘distance learning’, a half-way house between physical and virtual rehearsals, supported by rehearsal materials which means that you can rehearse forthcoming choral works at home, at your pace, and in a way that suits you, but knowing that your choir colleagues are doing something similar, ultimately working towards joint rehearsals and a performance. With our 49th year as a choir approaching, we know that it is likely to be a disrupted year and it will be hard to make definite plans based on what we will be performing. So, with that in mind, our thoughts go towards our Jubilee year (2021-2022) which we hope will be more predictable and see choirs once again being able to rehearse and perform together. This initiative is primarily about keeping us together as a unit, as much as it is about making quality music in restrictive circumstances, so that when we are once again able we will still have a choir that can get together to rehearse and perform. So, this is aimed at ALL current BDCS members (i.e. those that were enrolled with us for the 2019-2020 season just finished). There will be no cost to members who wish to take part.How it will work
All members will receive a complimentary copy of the Folk Song Sequence Score that Guy Turner has arranged for our Jubilee Prom Concert in 2021/2. This is currently being printed and will be your personal copy to keep as a souvenir of our forthcoming Jubilee year but will also be the score you use for the Prom Concert. Please take care of it, you can mark-up your copy with notes, but there are no spares! There will be a new ‘Distance Learning’ page on the website. This will contain the individual rehearsal sessions for each piece we are learning. Each ‘module’ will comprise:- A piano accompaniment - Michael Overbury has already recorded the piano accompaniment for all four folk song pieces,
- Guy conducting – Guy has already filmed these,
- Four professional singers have been recruited to record the Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Base parts,
- Warm-up routines
- Guy will also add appropriate introductions to each piece, commentary on difficult corners, or ‘born to be flat’ moments, advice about singing difficult sections, pronunciation etc.
Timetable of events
- w/c 13th July – Soloists record their parts
- w/c 13th July – Committee volunteers will analyse the membership into logical groupings for distribution of material, and recruit volunteers to help
- w/c 20th July – Jeff Sutton (you will remember from the BDCS video we made) to edit the various modules (which are then loaded to the BDCS YouTube channel)
- July 22nd – Details of the Distance Learning initiative will be included in the annual newsletter that will be distributed via BBC Bingham
- w/c 27th July – Our website designer (Madeleine Parkyn) will prepare the website page
- August 5th – Launch the scheme via BBC Bingham, go live on the website with module 1 (Ca’ the Yowes)
- August 6th, 7th, 8th – volunteers distribute the materials and instructions to members.
Dr Brad Poulson Email: brad.poulson@thebradleypartnership.com Mobile: 07734 056618
Bingham Broadcasting Corporation:
An Appreciation
Few choirs can have been as visionary in their response to the lockdown as the Bingham and District Choral Society. Grasping the opportunity to launch a new media institution, on March 25th THE BBC (capitals for disambiguation) went on air – or more correctly, if prosaically, on-line. This was no mere whimsical play on an acronym, but a bold re-affirmation of the great Reithian mission to, ‘inform, educate and entertain’. Oh, and let’s be clear, though there are pictures and video involved, as a genre, THE BBC is quite firmly Radio.
Over (so far) 15 episodes, we have enjoyed talks, quizzes, a panel show, and a series of Desert Island Discs, all masterfully engineered by Brad Poulson. Each of these have combined , in different degrees, the three pillars of the national broadcaster’s mission. Of course, they have tended to focus more on education and entertainment: the purely informational elements of the other BBC – like the shipping forecast or the fatstock prices (of fond memory) - being less easy to accommodate. Nonetheless if we think of information as the communication of facts rather than opinion or commentary, there has been plenty of it. Guy’s music quizzes are of course fairly bursting with facts, but then so are his illustrated talks. For example, from his fascinating introduction to the life of a cathedral choir (episode three) we learn two indisputable facts : that the Decani and Cantoris at Southwell are on different sides to most other cathedrals, and that, ‘French choirs are generally rubbish’.
So, to education and entertainment. Here THE BBC knows its demographic. This is Radios 3 and 4 territory, the audience that checks its pandemic statistics on ‘More or Less’, that joins Petroc Trelawny for a Friday morning singalong. How then has THE BBC fared in satisfying these exacting consumers?
Overall, pretty impressively. Guy’s series of music talks formed the core of the educational content. At once erudite and stimulating, they were delivered in an engaging style, though one that I would place closer to the late Antony Hopkins than to Tom Service. He might not consider this a bad thing. The Thiman episode stands out for its infectious advocacy of an unjustly eclipsed composer as well as a charming evocation of that most remote of historical periods, the recent past. Though I confess that, having sung ‘The Last Supper’ about fifty years ago it left no lasting impression on me. Whereas the final chorus of ‘Olivet to Calvary’, for all its rather cloying sentimentality, still lives in the memory.
Entertainment, famously, came a poor third in John Reith’s dour Presbyterian judgement. It is frightful to imagine, then, the righteous scorn spreading over those craggy, vulpine features at the proposal (episode 7) of a panel show in which the object is to lie the most convincingly. He left the BBC in 1938 and so his views on Desert Island Discs, which began in 1942, are not recorded. We can surmise that he would not have been a fan, except, perhaps of the ninth episode, in which the Reverend Canon W.H. Elliott took the opportunity to preach a sermon for the entire show. Sandwiched as this was between No 8 Joan Jay (a Windmill Girl) and No 9 ( Arthur Askey) we can imagine how it went down with the troops who were its first audience on the British Forces Programme.
No chorus girls so far on THE BBC’s guest list, but plenty to entertain us. Given the specialised field of castaways - four out of five professional musicians - the musical choices have been, predictably, of a high standard. But there have also been some surprises. How delightful to find amongst Emily Hodgkinson’s choices, both Finzi’s ‘My Spirit Sang all Day’ and Benny Hill’s ‘Ernie : The Fastest Milkman in the West’ . And there has been no trace of self indulgence. With three professional singers included - one actually described as a ‘diva’ – no one has been tempted to emulate the chutzpah of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf who famously chose seven of her own recordings plus one of the prelude to Der Rosenkavalier from a disc on which she also sang.
The fifth castaway was somewhat controversial. Not because he is a scientist and part-time comedian rather than a musician. Certainly not on account of his musical choices – that extraordinary Canadian baritone singing the Finzi. But because he is the host!! Is this why he is pictured with his back to us, in a vain attempt to conceal his identity? But no. As usual, THE BBC has done its research and found a precedent: Roy Plomley was himself the 15th castaway interviewed by the show’s producer Leslie Perowne on May 7th 1942.
We come finally to the choice of luxury, that window of insight into the idiosyncrasies of the castaway. Here however it pains me to enter a discordant note. Three castaways chose keyboards: Michael Overbury his clavichord; Emily, a piano, and the complete songs of Ned Rorem (nice); Guy - and you will see where I am going with this – a grand piano. Now I do not need to remind THE BBC audience of the stricture placed upon grand pianos by Roy Plomley, on the grounds that they may be used either as shelters or rafts. How surprising then to find our urbane host Richard – generally such a stickler for propriety – nodding this through without demur. We can only suppose that Guy had solemnly undertaken not to put it to such uses, much as Hermione Gingold was allowed to take the Albert Memorial after she promised not to live in it.
What fun all this has been! Of course, we want to be back singing together, enjoying Richard’s vintage jokes, and eating biscuits and flapjack. But won’t we also feel some regret, after this strangest of springs and summers, when eventually THE BBC closes down.
John Tomlinson – Choir Member
A cartoon of the BBC team by Linda Hunt
BDCS Composing Competition
BDCS is delighted to announce a new competition for young composers in our area. Entrants are invited to compose a short accompanied piece for SATB Choir, with a prize worth £500 to the winner. The winning entry will be premiered by the Choir in 2021. It is open to composers under 30 years of age and living in the East Midlands. The closing date is 31 July 2020. View full details here.
Publicity, Website and Twitter
The BDCS website www.binghamchoral.org is now firmly established as the main publicity resource for the choir. It keeps members posted about everything from their place on the coffee rota to forthcoming concert dates and useful rehearsal aids. It is also the most important source of information for people outside the choir, including potential new members. Followers of our Twitter thread, @BinghamChoral, are frequently signposted to the website for further information on a news item, as are those who read our monthly updates in various local village and parish magazines.
Our new design team, Andrew James and Penny Prior, produced a splendid and much-praised design for the posters and programmes for our Joyful Baroque autumn concert in November 2019. At our Christmas Concert, we once again organised a charity collection. The proceeds were split between two charities, Framework and Alzheimer’s Society. In a new departure this year, we then decided to invite a representative from each charity to visit us during a rehearsal to receive a replica cheque for the amount donated. This enabled members to hear more about the valuable work of the two organisations and also provided a chance to publicise the choir’s community outreach.
Since the beginning of lockdown in March 2020, publicity has inevitably lost momentum due to rehearsals being cancelled and the general uncertainty about the future. The BBC Bingham series of videos and podcasts, created and run by a talented team from within the choir, has not only kept choir members connected but has been made generally available through the website, helping to maintain the choir’s local profile. At this point, no-one knows what the future will bring but we are looking ahead with hope to the BDCS 50th anniversary jubilee in 2021/22 and beginning to plan a programme and a publicity strategy to support a wonderful celebration of this important landmark in the choir’s history.
Judy Unell – Publicity Officer
Tim Connery
Newsletter Editor