a super chorus for Bath?

I’ve just been reading a recent issue of Bath Life in which they interview Will Dawes, the director of music at Bath Choral Society. He expresses a wish to pull together various local choirs as a ‘super chorus’. ‘There are so many brilliant singers in the area, and sometimes it feels as though the groups are competing, when we could achieve something amazing by collaborating’.

Now there really was something a bit like this until about ten years ago – the Bath Festival Chorus. I wonder whether he knows about this bit of Bath’s musical history? Sadly I think that too much time has gone by to reconstitute the chorus with its membership as at 2005 (when it last performed), although I think many of those people are still around. Another concert which collected singers from all over was the performance of Mahler 8 in the 2000 Bath Festival. The difficulty with any such venture is the organisation – how are singers to be selected? when and where will they rehearse? what will the financial model be? who will keep track of contact details and ordering/distributing/collecting the music? and so on. Even a one-off concert would require a lot of work behind the scenes.