The Sixteen's Blog

Katy conducting

Some of you may remember that two of our singers went to Lagos to work with Cathedral Choir for a week in August.  Katy Hill has written a fascinating article about their experiences:

‘Bleary eyed and excited, Stuart and I are greeted with broad smiles and vigorous handshakes and bundled from the hot and frenetic arrivals lounge at Lagos Airport, swarming with hyperactive baggage touts and  taxi drivers all competing for business far too energetically for 5am, into a suddenly very calm and chilly air conditioned people carrier. The door shuts, and with a swift click the hubbub is silenced and replaced by the unexpected soundtrack of the Nottingham Church Choir singing English psalmody  emanating from the oh so up-to-date car sound system…

The Provost of Lagos’ Christ Church Cathedral, Rev’d Johnson, is a music lover and a wonderful man. Educated for a time at King’s College, London, he (himself a fine singer) rates the place of music in a place of worship extremely highly and wishes his choir to compete with among the best in the world. A frequent visitor to St Paul’s and Westminster Cathedrals when in London, he knows what he wants and his expectations are high. Earlier this year, he asked his good friend and fellow music lover, Damola Aboaba, to invite two singers from The Sixteen to visit Lagos to coach the trebles of the choir and make suggestions to help the improvement of the choir.

Lucky Stuart and lucky Katy.

Our mission was clear: to enthuse the trebles and make them sound better. How we would achieve this in 5 days was less crystal, and not something we could be sure about until we got there. Over the ensuing 5 days, we would give each of the 20 boys two hour-long singing lessons, and work collectively towards the performance of two treble only anthems and a psalm at the Sunday service, which we would conduct. Along the way, we would also surprise a bemused and beautiful bride with some impromptu Haydn, donned in brightly coloured traditional dress at her grand and joyful orange-themed wedding, sing a Bach duet wearing less colourful regular concert dress (and a hat), eat a lot

Gulder

of goat, drink a lot of Gulder (Nigeria’s and now Stuart’s favourite beer) and shake an ex-president’s hand, all the while smiling wide and genuinely heartfelt smiles until our cheeks, quite frankly, hurt a bit. Everywhere we went, we were made so unbelievably welcome by Damola, Rev’d Johnson and their friends, that we both felt both truly delighted and humbled by such warm and open kindness. And everybody we met laughs so very, wonderfully, loudly.

Inside the cathedral itself, the boys were impressively respectful and receptive, and in general the standard of singing and sight reading was already good. A special mention should also perhaps be made of the two resident organists, Babatunde Sosan and Adejola Adeosun, who were both as skilful as any organist I know. Each boy seemed to relish some one-on-one attention and gladly two lessons was plenty of time for each boy to relax and let their personalities shine through. Individual lessons quickly turned into mini master-classes, as boys actually abandoned their football games to come in and watch their colleagues at work. Amongst some stunning young  voices were a handful of sixteen to twenty year olds who were still clinging to their head voices and manfully whacking out top As from front rows of the choir stalls on a regular basis. After exploring their broken voices with them, we hope they will now be encouraged to move to the back rows and sing in their natural register, be it countertenor, tenor, or as in a couple of cases, rich bass voices which surprised their owners no end on first hearing. Naturally the younger boys will therefore need to take the lead as the older boys migrate, but we have no doubt they will manage perfectly from the way many of them  stepped up to the mark with impressive confidence as we dished out small solo lines in the Psalm, pleasantly surprising a number of the older choir members. All the trebles sang their Rutter and Franck anthems beautifully on the Sunday, dutifully forgiving the fairly experimental conducting that was in front of them (likened in my case to a jumbo jet trying to take off by a tenor who shall remain nameless).

Happily, our week there was not the end. Early in 2012, three boys from the choir will be joining us in London. Stuart, a bass at St Paul’s, has arranged for a couple of the trebles who really stood out to come and sing with the cathedral choir for a week, which we hope will create an enduring memory for all the boys involved, both Nigerian and British. The head chorister in Lagos, a twenty one year old called Joshua, impressed with his musical aptitude and a fine countertenor voice during our lessons, and he will also be flying over at the same time to study with Tim Travers Brown. We hope this visit will not only fuel their enthusiasm for the cathedral choir, but also encourage them to pass on what they learn by osmosis to their colleagues back home. Such is the community feel that surrounds the cathedral that it seemed no sooner had we dreamed up this trip of cross-pollination, than funding had already been raised from some enthusiastic and generous members of the congregation.

For our part, any expectations of our visit that we may have unwittingly gathered before going were blown out of the water, stretched and reworked, and returned to us in brightly coloured and sparkling HD. It was an experience of extremes, with chilly and smooth rides between our smart hotel and the cathedral each day, always accompanied by Norwich cathedral choir, versus the hot and hectic buzz of the amazingly over-populated and dusty world outside, with its own backing track of constant car horns, revving motorbikes and old VWs, a joyful disregard for traffic lights or, for that matter, which side of the road to drive on, and anything from lemons to carpets piled impressively high on grinning heads, weaving between the colourful street stalls and unfinished plumbing. Wonderful then that a common love of choral music provided such familiar and unifying ground for us all, allowing Stuart and me to feel (as the three visiting boys no doubt will at St Paul’s), oddly at home as we sang in the cathedral stalls a mere 3100 miles away. We are both very much look forward to our return trip next year.’

Katy and Stuart with the choir

A successful visit to Utrecht over the weekend, with a sold-out Domkerk for our concert of Roman repertoire.  Thanks, Emily, for some great photos, a selection of which are below: a rainbow over the Domkerk; proof that the singers make the most of their time when touring, cycling being added to our growing list of energetic activities (they managed to cycle into the country and stopped at a farm-shop for refreshment); and a shot of the Allegri Miserere solo quartet rehearsing (they always get placed in interesting parts of the building, although that often means being behind a pillar).  I listened to the concert at home via France Musique’s relay (link still in the previous post), but unfortunately my listening to the Miserere was interrupted by the incredible noise of two RAF Typhoons circling Cambridge, having escorted a Nigerian Airforce Hercules, which had radio failure, into  Cambridge Airport.  So, Nigeria makes our blog twice in a week!

Rainbow over the Domkerk

Fruit!

Allegri Miserere: the quartet rehearsing

Stuart Young and Katy Hill

Two of our singers, Stuart Young and Katy Hill, are in Lagos working with the choir of The Cathedral Church of Christ, giving workshops and ensemble training.  There is a flourishing choral foundation at the Cathedral, with 20 trebles, 16 altos, 14 tenors and 12 basses.

It is a great privilege for The Sixteen to be able to help facilitate these kinds of collaborations, supporting choral music in major cities around the world – not only sharing expertise, but giving our singers the opportunity to explore the music scene in other places.  I know King’s College Choir have toured to Lagos in the past, so maybe this will lead to a visit by our full choir one day!

Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos