Choirs

Choirs

I love to arrange music for choirs, and I love to lead them. I currently have six of my own and you can find out more about them below.

I started training to lead choirs in 2006 during my final year of university when I completed a year long placement with Gilly Love and the Silver Programme at Sage Gateshead. This was hugely valuable and gave me all the foundations I needed to start leading my own choirs. Since then I’ve developed further to now have my own style, which I hope is inclusive, fun, energetic, musical, effective, and efficient.

A choir to me is a group of people with a common interest in collective singing. My choirs either sing a whole mixture of repertoire or they state the focus in the name. All of my choirs laugh almost as much as they sing and I believe it’s my job, perhaps even my duty, to ensure everyone has learnt something and they leave the group feeling better than they did when they came in.

I prefer to work with groups having no sheet music or lyrics but lots of people need the visual or struggle to remember words so I’m not that mean! I do try to get my groups to look up off the page, and to eventually put down the sheet and be brave, the sound is much brighter, more confident.

Whether you’ve sung for twenty years or you have never found your singing voice there’s a place in one of my choirs for you. I love supporting new singers and challenging confident ones. If you’d like anymore information about my choirs please see below and/or use the contact tab above.

Song Reivers
Monday 10-11.30am
Tarset Village Hall, NE48
songreivers@gmail.com for more information but we meet every Monday in term time and you were welcome to just show up!

Starting in 2008, Song Reivers are a day time rural community choir in Tarset Village Hall three miles north of Bellingham. The repertoire changes regularly but includes some folk songs, some pop, some arranged just for the choir, some gospel, and much more. We often have a cup of tea and a piece of cake to start the day and always feel better at the end of a session than at the beginning. All members agree its a good way to start the week. Just turn up around ten-to-ten and you’ll be warmly welcomed. If we do performances we try to make them be for the local community… our carols-by-car is now a Christmas fixture as we visit those isolated or living alone in a very rural community and sing to them in their homes. We’ve also sung at the Sky Space up at Kielder and sometimes hold coffee mornings. There are around 25-30 at each practise with around 30 people ‘on the books’. Northumberland National Park has an average population density of 4 people per square mile so 20-30 people is a huge achievement!!

Tynedale Community Choir

Monday 7.30pm-9pm
Trinity Methodist Church, Hexham
tynedaleCchoir@gmail.com

All singers welcome – no auditions, no previous experience needed – just turn up, join in, and have fun! Our repertoire is very eclectic – traditional folk tunes, world music, rounds, gospel, shanties, pop, a little bit of light classical – whatever we fancy! Tynedale Community Choir has around 50-65 regulars and sound wonderful. We often sing around the community and for local events… and sometimes even in the pub!

tynedaleCchoir@gmail.com for further information and to join our mailing list.

After the pandemic and maternity leave I had to make a decision to scale back my choir work. I previously led North Tyne Voices in Humshaugh which is now led by Miles Wallace Clark. Hadrian Voices reformed after the pandemic in a different form. Sing Morpeth is still going under a new leader, and sadly West End Voices didn’t survive the disruption of the pandemic.