AROUND TOWN MEETS
Today, there are three youth choirs making up a total of around 300 singers who all perform at an exceptionally high level; an Intermediate group aged 10-16 was recently formed to bridge the gap between the big step up from the children’s choir to the senior squad. Due to the demand, Mat has also launched an adult’s choir called Barnsley Singers with 150 people regularly rehearsing including some former youth singers who wanted to carry on singing.
Starting with a raw and basic sound, Mat had the challenge of fine tuning the choir, working with a ten- piece professional band to improve their tone and melodies.
Inspired by the Kodaly Institute, Mat uses the Kodaly method developed by Zoltan Kodaly to introduce children to difficult music concepts. Through movement, games, exercises and hand signs, the child-development approach reinforces everything from rhythm to key notes in the easiest possible way to make learning to read music a joy rather than torture. Mat and his team of assistant directors create new arrangements on well-known songs for the choir to perform; their repertoire includes songs from every genre from pop and rock, to gospel and classical, and even reggae and world music. They also perform relaxed and upbeat songs in Glee-club or Barber Shop styles, working with harmonies and a capella soloists.
One song alone takes 25 hours to arrange the vocal parts and another ten hours to arrange the band music – that’s before rehearsal time
Performance at Riga with the choir and the band.
However, the hard work quickly paid off; after just a few short
months as a group, BYC performed their first two-night, sell-out concert that summer in the great acoustics of Emmanuel Methodist Church on Huddersfield Road- a place where both folk singer Kate Rusby and the famous Grimethorpe Colliery Band had performed before.
Invitations started to land on the mat, with the choir asked to perform at venues such as London’s Olympic Stadium and Bridgewater Hall in Manchester.
After just four years as a choir, Mat unwittingly entered BYC into the World Choir Games one evening in 2013 while researching the choir Olympics; the biggest singing competition in the world. “I’d always been worried about competitions as there’s a notion of success and failure which can be unpalatable. But I’d become fascinated in this so-called choir Olympics and only put my details in for them to send me more information. I woke up to an email saying ‘thank you for entering the World Choir Games,’” Mat says. Planning to take 40 members of the choir, the countdown was on to raise £50,000 needed to travel to Riga in Latvia where the eighth world games would be held the following summer. Local MP Dan Jarvis MBE and other significant local people got behind the campaign and the choir managed to raise the money.
They also had to tailor their song choices to the two categories they would be entering: Popular Choral Music and Gospel in The Open Competition for amateur choirs. With 30 new songs to learn, the choir even tested their abilities to pick up foreign languages, learning difficult variations in Latin, Greek and even Mandarin.
At the event, 27,000 singers made up 460 choirs from around 73 countries across the world, many of whom trained daily in the run up to the competition. BYC were given
there. Through sponsored 13- hour, non-stop Sing-a-thons and other community events, the choir managed to raise the money and headed off to the European stage. The choir entered two categories, Jazz & Pop and Gospel & Spiritual, both of which they won outright. Due to their success, they were automatically put through to the Grand Prix of Nations against some of the best choirs in the world including American, Chinese and European choirs.
During the competition, a panel of jurors assess each choir on strict criteria which includes tuning, intonation and authenticity. Each choir is awarded points based on these, with 60 points gaining a bronze medal, 70 for silver and 80 for gold.
Award collection at Riga
the chance to be coached by global music stars and perform in front of a crowd of 22,000 people. “I told the choir, even if we finished bottom of our categories, it wouldn’t matter. The opportunity alone was mega for them all.” The choir went on to achieve two Gold Diplomas, winning the Popular Choral Music category and coming second in Gospel.
Subsequently, BYC were invited to the European Choir Games in Magdeburg, Germany the following year.
“We’d proven ourselves at World level and had now moved up into the Champions Competition which is like the Champions League in singing. We’d be up against outstanding adult and university choirs so would we be up for the job?”
To go to Germany, Mat was planning on taking a bigger choir of 60 children and so the heat was on to raise £80,000 to get
“There was an American college choir in our category, Singcopation from Mt San Antonio in California, who received 95 points which was an incredibly high score and it was clear that they would win the competition. Our choir went on to win the category with a score of 96.5.”
After this victorious feat, BYC went up in the world rankings from 450th to 44th in their category. Today, they sit fourth in the Pop, Jazz, Gospel, Spiritual & Barbershop Choirs. Their reputation as a force to be reckoned with rocketed, with Mat being asked to become an international juror and give workshops to other choirs from China to Russia. Other well-known musical directors also made visits to Barnsley to work with the choir, such as Grammy award-winning tenor, Paul Phoenix.
The choir also worked with Simon Humphrey, former CBS music engineer responsible for The Clash’s early recordings, to produce a charity Christmas single, raising £10,000 through sales which they donated to Barnsley Hospice. Performances were now further afield, with venues encompassing
aroundtownmagazine.co.uk 5
Celebrating at Riga
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