In the mid 1990’s I lived in Manchester, and moved there with high hopes of lots of interesting singing possibilities. Looking back on that time now, I am still baffled and dismayed by the fact that, fresh from a choral award at Cambridge, I never found a place there in a good, small choir that met frequently, despite four years of trying.<\/p>\n
There was a great shortage of such choirs, for which I suggest some possible reasons below. Places in the choirs that existed were jealously guarded and rarely fell vacant. At the time I moved away, neither the Manchester Chorale nor the Maia Singers had had a soprano vacancy for some three years. With hindsight, I was wasting my time even enquiring about joining them! The William Byrd Singers went for two years without a vacancy before I auditioned, unsuccessfully (I was competing against someone returning to the choir after an absence, and against a vocal student at the RNCM). I did however sing with the John Powell Singers, a chamber choir who performed occasional concerts, services and radio broadcasts.<\/p>\n
I’ve sometimes come across singers of about my standard who held down places in more than one of these choirs. I therefore estimate that during 1992-96 the soprano places in the chamber choirs I knew about were filled by no more than 30 singers, in an urban area with a population of millions!<\/p>\n
I realised how limited Manchester’s chamber choir scene had been when I moved, and had no difficulty in finding singing at the right level in Bath or Bristol. I also suspect that had I been a tenor or bass, I’d have found a place in a choir of this type in Manchester just as easily. Perhaps I was just unlucky, as I’ve heard of other singers having similar experiences elsewhere.<\/p>\n
I attribute the shortage of chamber choirs partly to the strong North of England tradition of large choral societies. Also possibly to a lack of suitable performance venues. (Early in the 20th century almost all the parish churches in Manchester city centre were closed and demolished. No one thought of turning one of them into a small concert hall, similar to St. George’s in Bristol). Or maybe to low audiences for chamber choir concerts.
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\nIf anyone who was singing in Manchester at this time reads this, I’d be interested to hear their comments. Why were there so few chamber choirs, and such a low turnover of sopranos? Did none of them ever move away from the area or take time out to have a baby? Were the choirs’ waiting lists for auditions organised or chaotic? Was I trying the wrong choirs? Were there others which would have suited me, but whose publicity I never saw? Is the situation better now?<\/p>\n
I have now also written about my experiences with Manchester’s church choirs<\/a>.<\/p>\n I’ve closed this item to comments now but I received an interesting comment on it here<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the mid 1990’s I lived in Manchester, and moved there with high hopes of lots of interesting singing possibilities. Looking back on that time now, I am still baffled and dismayed by the fact that, fresh from a choral … Continue reading