Feature: Celebrating song at the Roundhouse - Voices Now from March 24-27.

Published: 17 March 2011
by SEBASTIAN TAYLOR

FANCY a chance to sing with TV choral animateur Gareth Malone?

If so, get yourself along to the Roundhouse next week when he’s doing a two-hour “Come & Sing” morning session. “I’m running the session especially for new singers – no experience necessary or even desirable,” Gareth says. “It’ll guarantee to get you all singing in harmony.”

So far, more than 300 wannabe singers have signed up for the event and the number could well reach 1,000 before Gareth raises his baton.

His session – featuring a performance by South Oxhey Community Choir, which starred in his award-winning TV series, The Choir – is one of the highlights of the four-day Voices Now festival starting next Thursday. There will be 38 choirs with more than 2,000 singers and there’s a fair chance that number will top 7,000. 

Top choirs taking part include the Latvian Radio Choir, BBC Singers, London Symphony Chorus, The Clerks and Holst Singers. The Magnets, an a cappella band, and female vocal trio Juice will be demonstrating their virtuosity – and members of both groups are hosting a beat-box vocal percussive workshop. 

The festival has been put together by producer Matthew Swann and artistic director Stephen Layton. 

“There’s nothing quite like the festival anywhere in the country except, perhaps, for the choral side of the annual Eisteddfod in Wales,” says Mr Swann. “But this is the first to involve professionals and amateurs singing together, virtually side-by-side, with no competitions and no prizes. It’s a festival of all things singing with some of the best choirs in the world alongside complete novices.”

Twenty choirs from London and the South-east will take turns singing in the foyer on Saturday and Sunday. Among them will be the Cecil Sharp House Community Choir; lesbian and gay choir Diversity; women’s socialist choir Velvet Fist; punk rock choir Hackney Secular Singers; and the Rose & Crown Singers from Walthamstow.

World-class early music singers The Clerks will sing with choirs from Gospel Oak Primary and the Rosary RC Primary in Haver­stock Hill and there will be special performances by the new Round­house Choir and Roundhouse Experimental Choir. 

One of the performances on the final day under­scores the unique flavour of the festival. Thomas Tallis’s monumental 40-part Spem in Alium, com­posed for eight choirs with five parts each, is to be the subject of a Come & Sing session. It’s being led by acclaimed Holst Singers and conducted by Edward Wickham, one of the world’s leading renaissance music specialists. So far, 200 experienced singers have signed up for the session and more are welcome for what is likely to be a truly glorious experience.

• Voices Now is at the Roundhouse from March 24-27. Foyer perfor­mances free; concerts cost from £5. 0844 482 8008,
www.roundhouse.org.uk; www.facebook.com/voicesnow