In the beginning

So, this is the story of a few amateur singers who wanted to put together a gospel choir.


I sing in a village choir of about 40 singers in France (although I'm English). I'm a soprano and sing solo. The choir sings a very eclectic mix of World music, renaissance drinking songs, humorous songs in French, Russian orthodox music, Eastern European folk songs, traditional Mexican songs, and lots of African songs. Occasionally we sing a gospel song or two.

In 2005 I signed up for a gospel singing weekend in Tours which involved several voice workshops, rythm, and preparing for a mass choir concert on the last evening. I dragged along a couple of members of our choir and it was fantastic. Not least because of the superb group leaders : Erwan Jan, Taïa Kronberg, Wayne Ellington (GB) and Karen Gibson (Kingdom Choir, London UK).

We were all really energised by this weekend and I had no problem persuading the same people, along with a few more, to join me again in 2006 for a similar course. Once again it was a fantastic weekend which we enjoyed immensely. (Check out the CD of the concert coming out in October 2006 - details will follow!!)

Several participants were so excited about this gospel music that they asked me to start up a gospel choir. I must say that apart from having taught them a couple of gospel songs in the regular choir I am not a choir director normally. But no-one seems to mind that so we've decided to go for it.

I wasn't sure if anyone would be really interested in singing exclusively gospel music : a lot of our singers are non-believers. But we have a list of over twenty people who want to come along.

As we are all rather over-committed with work/family/associations we decided to meet only once a month. So the first challenge will be to see if that suffices to learn the songs. The language is another potential difficulty for all the chorists as some of them don't even speak English. For me the biggest challenge will be musical : kind of an upward learning curve as my years of formal music learning are rather a long way behind me. I'm relying on my ear!

We haven't managed to find a venue for our first meeting (set for next Thursday 12th October) so we're meeting in a friend's basement if nothing else turns up!

This blog, then, is to chart our progress (or lack of it) and will be a place for my thoughts on the project. Your comments and tips will be welcome for us to improve.
Catch you later.
Gospella