Tagged In: community choirs
New Arranger Welcome – Fiona Lander
Last week we published Fiona’s introductory collection of compositions and arrangements on ChoirCommunity. To accompany this launch, Craig chatted to Fiona over Zoom about her music influences and career.
An Interview With Craig McLeish
It’s only taken four years, but we’ve finally got around to having a chat with Craig – Co-founder of, and prolific contributor to ChoirCommunity! Many thanks to Gitika Partington for taking Craig out of his comfort zone and putting him through the same sort of paces he has set for all our other arrangers over the last few months.
There are some great stories, as well as lots of insights into Craig’s approach to musical direction, arrangement and composition, influenced by exposure to some of the greatest musicians the country has produced from a very early age!
New Arranger Welcome – Kate Shipway
This week, we’re delighted to welcome our newest arranger, Kate Shipway to the website. Kate is the first new arranger to come on board via our new ‘Artist Application’ process which we introduced at the end of 2020. Her submission was the one which really caught our eye so it’s great to be able to publish her first collection of songs and arrangements this week.
Score or No Score? Teaching Songs By Ear
Photograph is of the Bristol Gasworks Choir by James Barke
The first time I learned songs in unaccompanied harmony by ear was at a “Sweet Soul Sisters” Bristol workshop in the early 1990s. I remember feeling my musical brain being challenged in a new and exciting way – trying to remember intervals by feel rather than counting the lines on a stave, noticing how the five parts of the song fitted together and letting the notes slowly seep into my brain – without the help of a musical score. And I was moved to tears by the sensation of singing in harmony with a large group of people. Two members of the Sweet Soul Sisters (Dee Jarlett and Ali Orbaum) later started the now legendary Gasworks Choir teaching large numbers of people in this same way, by ear.
New Arranger Welcome – Anna Tabbush
In this, the sixth of our series of video conversations with our team of arrangers, Craig chats to Anna Tabbush about her very musical upbringing and her passion for making music an experience with emotional and physical impact.
All of Anna’s arrangements, to which we are expecting to add may more, can be found on her shop page here
New Arranger Welcome – Doug Watts
In the second of our series of video interviews – partly inspired by the the experience of endless Zoom calls during lockdown – Craig talks to Doug Watts about his musical life and the steps which led up to joining ChoirCommunity!
What’s the Value of Music?
As a choir leader or committee member, what percentage of your overall costs do you budget for the music you use and perform? This is a question that I’ve been able to ask quite a number of times over the last couple of years (we also ran a survey asking this very question before we launched ChoirCommunity) and the answer has often been quite interesting, if sometimes a little questionable.
…Because the answer is quite often a variation of either “I don’t know”, or “as little as possible” or even “we don’t really have a budget for music”.