Crouch End Festival Chorus: An open mind and flexible sound

Singing to an audience of 50,000 people in torrential rain in Hyde Park as the backing choir for Andrea Bocelli, Seal and Hans Zimmer; performing Duke Ellington’s Sacred Concert with a jazz band in King’s College Chapel, Cambridge; and opening the BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall (RAH) alongside the BBC National Chorus and Orchestra of Wales in a performance of Verdi’s Requiem. That was just one summer month in the diary of the Crouch End Festival Chorus (CEFC), which has been celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.

As its name suggests, the choir was formed to provide a local amateur chorus for Crouch End Arts Festival. At its founding, about 80 singers were supported by members of the London Philharmonic Chorus (LPC) in a performance of Verdi’s Requiem in Hornsey Town Hall in September 1984. With around 150 singers now on its books, the choir is still based in North London, where it performs frequently at local churches and venues such as Alexandra Palace, but many of its members travel from much further afield to rehearsals. Performances take place at all the capital’s main concert halls and arenas and occasionally beyond.

Friends in high places: Crouch End Festival chorus performing alongside Hans Zimmer ©Crouch End Festival Chorus

In a city full of choirs, CEFC is unusual in the breadth of its repertoire and performance style. Recordings for film, pop, rock and video games are an important part of a portfolio of activity – over the past 20 years, the choir has recorded many movie soundtracks including the Elton John biopic Rocketman, A Cure for Wellness, 1408 and Six Minutes to Midnight, as well as numerous television series including Doctor Who, Good Omens, The Crown, Call the Midwife, and Thunderbirds are Go!.

This month’s CEFC schedule began with Elijah in Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre with Bryn Terfel singing the title role; continued with a film in concert performance with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra alongside a screening of Home Alone in the Royal Albert Hall; and will conclude with carol concerts on consecutive nights (20 and 21 December) in the Barbican (alongside the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge) and at St Michael’s Church, Highgate. Next year’s plans include a concert of shorter, mainly a cappella works taking their theme from Jacob Collier’s jazz-inflected World, O World, at Holy Trinity, Sloane Square on 1 February and Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis at Alexandra Palace in April.

The Chorus performs alongside Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds ©Crouch End Festival Chorus

‘I think we must be one of the busiest and most successful choirs in the world,’ founding conductor David Temple told LBC Radio recently, adding that CEFC doesn’t have its own sound, but prides itself on being able to produce whatever sound is needed for a particular concert or recording. A former teacher, Temple taught himself to read music after joining the London Philharmonic Choir (LPC) at the age of 18, and it was one of his LPC colleagues, John Gregson, who persuaded him to take up the baton and conduct CEFC’s inaugural concert, little guessing where the venture would lead. He is now a fulltime conductor, musical director of the Hertfordshire Chorus as well as CEFC and a guest chorus master for both the BBC Symphony and London Symphony Choruses.

Temple’s unorthodox introduction to conducting means that CEFC is unusual in not including sight-singing in the audition process. He is looking for vocal quality and musicality. ‘For years our entry test was just singing “Happy Birthday”,’ he says, adding that it’s possible to get a very good sense of a potential member’s capacity for accurate pitching and sensitive phrasing even from such a short, well-known song. There’s a bit more to the process these days, but music is provided in advance and the choir’s website includes a video including clips of auditions so that new recruits can see what to expect.

'David is an incredible conductor; he makes it fun, but he has high standards and expects us to pull out all the stops for every performance' ©Zoe Norfolk

Tenor Craig Wilkie, a freelance HR consultant, applied to join CEFC with his wife after hearing the choir in a concert at the Barbican. ‘We thought it would be nice, now that our children were becoming more independent, to do something together, fairly close to home. I hadn’t sung since school and wasn’t at all sure that I would get in. I did, but the next challenge was learning the music, which was all new to me, even the Christmas carols. But there’s a really collegial atmosphere and the rest of the tenor section have been very supportive.

‘We’re expected to go and do our homework between rehearsals and listen to the recommended recordings, and David is great at telling us about the music and explaining how to sing it. I have to pinch myself, as a mid-40s bloke who is not at all part of this world, to think I was able to share a stage with Bryn Terfel!’

©Yang Liu Photography

Alto Tina Burnett has been in the choir almost since it started; she could read music when she joined, but her singing experience was limited and she says she has definitely learned ‘on the job’ as CEFC has developed. ‘The standard of our performances has just gone up and up,’ she says, ‘and it’s now much harder to get in because we’re so popular. We’ve a waiting list for all sections except the tenors. David is an incredible conductor; he makes it fun, but he has high standards and expects us to pull out all the stops for every performance. Singing on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury with Ray Davies, one of the highlights of my four decades in the choir, is just as important as singing Verdi at the First Night of the Proms.’

Burnett is part of a team that has recently been set up to acknowledge the demographic imbalance that exists in choral music generally and try to redress it by making CEFC more representative of its North London community. The initiative is in its early stages, but includes offering workshops for local singers, forging links with the community, providing diversity and inclusion training for committee members and trustees, and offering free concert tickets to people who either cannot afford to attend or might not think a CEFC performance is for them. The aim is that growing and diversifying audiences will in time lead to a more diverse choir.

Home and away: The choir performs in North London venues including Alexandra Palace ©Yang Liu Photography

At the other end of the musicianship scale, for the past five seasons CEFC has run a mentoring scheme for young conductors, two of whom spend a season with the choir, helping with rehearsals, receiving guidance from Temple and taking part in an annual conducting workshop. Bach’s B minor Mass is on the menu for the 2025 workshop, on 15 February in Crouch End.

Might this be part of a succession plan? David Temple says not; when he is ready to put down his baton, he will give the committee plenty of notice and they will advertise for a new musical director. But he doesn’t expect this to happen any time soon: ‘I feel as fit, agile and energetic as ever.’