Peterborough Male Voice Choir will perform a 75th anniversary concert in Peterborough Cathedral on Saturday July 10th 2010, supported by Roythornes Solicitors and Peterborough City Council, in aid of Help for Heroes. Jonathan Williams and Will Prideaux from the Choir have a conversation with the BBC’s Andy Gall in the Peterborough Breakfast Show, broadcast at 07:27 on Friday May 29th 2010 on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire.
ANDY: Now Peterborough’s Male Voice Choir is hosting a seventy fifth anniversary concert on the Tenth of July in aid of the charity Help for Heroes. Members Jonathan Williams and Will Prideaux, who’s the Music Director, have joined us in the studio this morning. Good morning chaps.
BOTH: Good morning.
ANDY: Good to hear from you. You have the voices, don’t you, that are just obligatory for singing that kind of well for singing opera really anyway in a choir. (WARBLES)(LAUGHS)
WILL: We certainly do. But it’s something that everyone can do. We’ve got a load of guys involved in this project that haven’t sung before at all. So it’s not about just for those people who have got experience, established choral singing people, it’s for anyone at all really.
ANDY: Has your outfit done anything for Help for Heroes in the past, or is this the first time that you’ve linked yourself to it?
WILL: This is the first time we’ve come together for Help for Heroes. And it’s also the first time we’ve worked with Roythornes Solicitors, our sponsors.
ANDY: Ok. So it’s going to be on the Tenth of July. Where is it going to be held?
JONATHAN: We’re in the Cathedral.
ANDY: In the Cathedral?
JONATHAN: In the Cathedral. We’ve got another arranged earlier in June. It’s at Castor, in the church there. (ed.note: Saturday 12th June 2010 19:30 pm St Kyneburgha’s Church Castor )
ANDY: Brilliant. OK so listen. I’d like to have an idea of what I would need to do if I was going to be in the choir. The sort of songs that you would sing, what’s the classic sort of song that would be sung?
WILL: Oh we’re singing a whole bunch of things but unfortunately the time for joing up to join the choir for this concert has passed …
ANDY: No.
WILL: .. which is unfortunate.
ANDY: I missed my .. aah .. I was all about it, the breathing, the intercostal diaphragmatic breathing method. I’m all about that.
WILL: I think we even auditioned you on the radio last time we were here.
ANDY: I think you did. And I was ..
JONATHAN: Don’t ask this morning for heaven’s sake. (LAUGHS)
ANDY: I embarassingly saw .. we haven’t been looking at each other’s eyeline, because I knew that my application was in, but I didn’t get ..
WILL: Yes. I’m going to get back to you on that.
ANDY: (LAUGHS) Please do. But there is something. It’s a lovely thing to be able to do, to be able to sing like you guys can, and you say that anybody can do it.
WILL: Yes. Definitely.
JONATHAN: Even for someone .. the last time I sang was at Lancing College Choir when I was eighteen, so it’s a bit of a learning curve to relearn how to do it.
ANDY: I had to do .. this is a little bit of redundant intimacy, but I had some voice coaching the other day at work, and they said, oh look, you know, if you want to explore the parameters of your voice you need to sing extremes, so you need to sing some Big John, the song (SINGS) Big John. (TALKS) Right, so you’ve got to do that. And also, the other side, you’ve got to be Kate Bush. (SINGS) Out on the wiley, windy moors. We’d roll and fall in green. (TALKS) So I’ve got to do all of that. But if I was to come to a choir, would you just basically specify, you’d narrow me down and find, that’s where you are.
WILL: No.
JONATHAN: Not at all. (LAUGHS)
ANDY: All singing! You’d be expected to go up and down and all over?
WILL: We’re going to find out where you’re most confortable range-wise and put you in a particular voice part. But when it comes to musical genres, and different types of music, we’re doing the whole broad spectrum of stuff, not just any one particular thing.
ANDY: So for people who want to come along on the Tenth of July, to enjoy the Choir, for Help for Heroes of course, can you just give them a little flavour, a little flavour of something?
WILL: At this time of the morning you’re really not going to want to hear it.
ANDY: Really?
WILL: No.
ANDY: Well listen to me. I was happy enough to sing a little bit of Kate Bush. I can do that. It’s either a bit more of Kate Bush from me, Babushka Babushka, which nobody wants to hear, let’s face it, especially the Producer, she just ran out of the room.
WILL: (LAUGHS)
ANDY: So what about just a little bit?
WILL: (LAUGHS) It’s not going to happen.
ANDY: All right then. We’ll listen to Part One of how to play the bongos, if that’s how you’re going to be. (PLAYS TAPE OF HOW TO PLAY THE BONGOS) There you go. That’s a little bit better than Kate Bush. But I would have loved to hear some choir. So just one more time, if people want to go along, plug it with all your heart.
WILL: We’re on the Tenth of July in Peterborough Cathedral, as part of the Peterborough Festival. You can get your tickets from Peterborough Cathedral Shop, or from the Destination Centre on Bridge Street.
ANDY: Jonathan Williams and Will Prideaux the Music Director, thank you very much for talking to us this morning.
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