Singing

I was first interested in Singing as a very young child.

This is the story of how I grew up singing in various stages at school:

  1. The St George’s Story 1983-1986

Saint Georges School Hannover Square in Mayfair, London was my first school. I lived in a relative Eden at the time in a mews flat five minutes from Marble Arch and went to school through Hyde Park and across Park Lane.

It was noticed that I had a creative talent and that I might be an actor. they gave me a leading role in The King with No Clothes the school play and I was the best in the class at reading. I sang in the Chapel in Hannover Square and shortly after that Miss Carey the school Secretary was retiring. When she was a young lady she had been a Music Hall singer in London so we put on a show for her departure and I appeared with my walking stick in a Trio of Galloping Majors.

2. Widford Lodge Preparatory School for Boys 1987-1989

At Widford Lodge Prep School for Boys I joined my first regular choir which was the Boys Choir of Widford Lodge I moved to this school after my parents divorced. It was then a single sex traditional private primary school with a strict academic agenda. It was an incredibly interesting curriculum in those days because it was not centralised so the teachers could do as they wished and we did creative writing in English all the time with our choirmaster James Smith, a bit of science and Art, they started us with French and a bit of O level Geography and History when we were just 9! It was run like a 1950s Oxford College. We all had lunch and assembly together in the hall with our Headmaster Henry Witham. We had to stand up when we went in and the principle sat on the centre table with the big chairs with his prefects, and we said grace together for our meal and then sat down dished it out from one end and ate.

‘For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen.’

If you put your elbows in the table rather than your forearms Mr Smith sent you out of lunch with nothing you had to be careful with that it was a rather spiteful running joke with him.

Mr James Smith and his wife Katie Fenn were Graduates of Trinity Laban College of music in London. I’m in the middle on the far left. James left us in 1989 about a term before I did to take up being head of music at Roald Dahl’s former public school Repton College in the North of England.

The Boys Choir of Widford Lodge 1988 or 1989

We did services at Great Baddow Church and Waltham Abbey, Carols and Founders day in Chelmsford Cathedral, Christian assemblies every day, and Chelmsford Cathedral Festival Fringe 1987 & 88. We also sang in the first round of Sainsbury’s Choir of the Year Competition at St Kats College Cambridge and were invited to sing at the Pearse School in a Choral seminar with the top lines from all the Cambridge College Choirs in a production of Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat as it was known then (now. just Joseph.)

This is me adorned with ruffle, cassock surplus, and dragon’s teeth at Chelmsford Cathedral Festival Fringe 1988.

Not getting in at first

He didn’t let me in the choir in the first term which painfully bitter and it also meant that when the full members went on tour to Amsterdam Cathedral I as a probationer wasn’t allowed to go with them. I wailed to mum for 2 whole weeks because of that, but he kept my head down and was an excellent choirmaster musically even if he never let you pick your music up in the sermon under fear of death, same for passing the Refreshers round in prayers.

My audition for the Chapel Royal in St James’s Palace to be a Chorister for Queen Elizabeth II

In 1989 I was given an audition for the Chapel Royal in St James’s Palace in London as part of my entrance exam for Westminster Private School. I didn’t get it but he liked my voice, strangely enough I could hear seconds better than 3rds in those days. I sang my solo quite well, I think it was Oh, for the Wings of a Dove, from Hear My Prayer by Mendelssohn. I did get to see the Chapel where Purcell worked at Master of the Kings Music though, and the Queen’s Choristers rehearse for Remembrance Day on Whitehall, which was amazing! You win some, you lose some!

Processing into Chelmsford Cathedral as a Probationer in 1987

3. Ipswich School 1989-1996

  1. My four Epochs of Ipswich School Chapel Choir 1989 – 1996

Ipswich School was the public school I got of the six that I applied for and having got my place at first as a fee payer and then later as an Assisted Places Scholar when dad died in 1993. I auditioned for Ipswich School Chapel Choir in the first term in 1989 and got in straight away.

(a) The Stephen Orton Era 1989 – 1990

My first choirmaster at Ipswich School was quite a good one. He was quite a famous musician Stephen Orton in Cambridge circles and also a chess player so I joined both his chapel choir and chess club at first.

I beat the girl who came third in the Suffolk Junior Chess Championships 1989 and that gave me a reasonable rating for an 11 year old of 978. Stephen rated 1000 as very good and I could have had 2 draws if I known the rules to right the moves down every time.

The Chapel Choir Tour to Chevreuse near Paris the Week after the Cold War Ended 18 – 24 October 1989

Mugshot. I’m on the far right this time!

I think that was in the churchyard where we sung Catholic High Mass.

This was the team sheet for the tour. A few famous BBC names in there in Simon Wilcox, I believe George Double and certainly Stephen Trowell of the Magnets. Stephen Orton himself and his son Joe both now deceased sadly. Francis Goodhand now theatre director and son of my beloved English teacher John Goodhand, the Seatons and Lyons’s world class musician and friend Jamie Trowell brother of Stephen and Paul Simons who I believe became Organ Scholar of Pembroke College Cambridge the year after. We only had sixth form girls in those days we were mostly single sex then. There was certainly strength and depth in there that year. In fact it probably was the best choir we ever had bearing in mind the amount of repertoire we learned in just a half trimester for it which is listed below.

This was the incredible repertoire list just how we learned all that I’ll never know! We never learned like that again! Stephen’s work rate was phenomenal. He knew John Rutter and people and he left us to become Sir Neville Mariners Cellist as a top performer, pure genius.

This was the repertoire list we learned, they must have been nuts but we’d did sing it all. I mean I was Glad AND Blessed be God the Father AND the whole of Let They Hand Be Strengthenéd plus more in one tour! Even Andrew Leach wouldn’t have dared that! Unreal, I was too young to appreciate it and I don’t know how I did it. One venue we sang at in a flint stone church in the middle of nowhere I remember we got three standing ovations and encores with an audience of nine and ranks as the best early experience of making music. You have to remember those pieces meant something to to the French it was just one week after the Berlin wall fell, we were British, and popular! A Non – substitutable experience that. That was my contribution to the euphoria of 1989. I turned 11 on the second day of the tour it was fantastic!

AND Rejoice in the Lamb as WELL? My golly!

We were only a school choir! Boy, the French is a bit dodgy! I would suggest something like this but it’s probably not perfect. I feel something like this would be more intelligible to a Frenchman:

6. Deux Motets


Cette pieces de la musique sacrée Française, qui sont composé de Maurice Dureflé sont basés dans un mélodie Grégorien. Les examples uniques restent chez un tradition catholique et européenne fort. Ils se donne l’écouteur un impression de quelque chose á picturesque qui se trouve dans les temps anciens peut être.

This was the tour plan:

Trip to Norwich Cathedral 3rd March 1990

The next term we took the pleasure of singing in Norwich Cathedral on an evensong visit there was a lovely mugshot of all the trebles shown in The Ipswichian school magazine that year. There is no record in the parent’s letters of what we sang.

After school 1996-1997

  1. Initial thoughts
  2. Colchester Institute
  3. My Grade 8 and Auditions
  4. GSMD

The German Epoch 2001-2007

  1. Kassel Bach Choir
  2. Kassel Uni Choir
  3. Cologne Conservatoire Wuppertal Campus

The Baritone Renaissance 2014-2020

  1. Lexden Choral Society and Church Choir
  2. Roman River Festival Chorus
  3. The Pimlott Foundation Family Choir
  4. Aldeburgh Voices
  5. The Really Big Chorus
  6. Colchester Choral Society
  7. Simon Halsey Workshop in London

The Home Studio Era – 2021 onwards