Hackney Singers celebrate 40th Anniversary!

Local choir Hackney Singers are celebrating 40 years of operating within the borough with a Victorian evening of music on 5 October, aptly hosted at St. Mary’s Church, Stoke Newington, noted for its atmospheric Victorian interior. Founded in 1973 as an evening class as part of the Hackney Institute Adult Education Programme, the Hackney Singers now draw almost 200 members from Hackney and the surrounding London boroughs.

The performance will comprise Bruckner’s Motets and Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, featuring internationally acclaimed tenor Paul Austin Kelly. The choir will be directed by renowned conductor Mark Shanahan, who has been the choir’s music director for over ten years, with accompaniment by répétiteur Andrew Storey and a brass ensemble.

“Although there are quite a lot of non-auditioning choirs, what I think is quite unusual about Hackney Singers is the ambitious repertoire the music team selects for us”, said choir member Alice Mead. “There's no dumbing down, and the assumption is that anyone can get to grips with good music”. This ethos is that anyone can learn and perform music well is perhaps what led to Hackney Singers being asked to represent the borough at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Paralympics, performing a specially-commissioned piece by London composer Errollyn Wallen.

Other recent highlights include working on the BBC’s Sing Halleluiah! project, which culminated with an on-stage performance at the London Coliseum; working with a Hackney-based film production company on the soundtrack for a feature film; working with the Sedibeng Choral Society from Botswana, which provided the soundtrack to the hit TV series the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency; and a joint performance of Handel’s Messiah with the Lewisham Choral Society, at the Royal Festival Hall. The choir’s roots remain in Hackney, however, and its free annual Christmas concert raises money for the Hackney Night Shelters, through donations.

“It's also important to me that the choir does feel properly local”, said Mead. “It's hard to put your finger on, but it does have a Hackney vibe. It may not precisely mirror the demographics of the entire borough, but I certainly meet people I wouldn't come across anywhere else!”

The choir began its life as an evening class in singing, as part of the Hackney Institute Adult Education Programme. In 1979, it was decided that a punchier name was needed, and the Hackney Singers were born. Lil Wilson took over in 1982, and under her leadership the choir grew in size and ambition, outgrowing its rehearsal premises in Laura Place. It moved to Chelmer Road School, and began to take on larger-scale choral works.

When Lil moved on in 1992, the choir had grown to over 100 members. Her place was taken by the choir’s long-time accompanist Bill Lloyd. His place at the keyboard was taken by Andrew Storey, who continues in this role today. In the mid-1990s, the choir moved to St. Luke’s, just off Morning Lane, where its Thursday night rehearsals continue.

Bill Lloyd left the choir to become a BBC Music Producer in 1997, and an unexpected decampment by his successor left the choir rudderless in the run-up to a performance of Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast. Mark Shanahan, the conductor of the Forest Philharmonic, stepped into the breach. Under his stewardship, the choir has sometimes surprised itself (and even Shanahan) with the advances in technique and musicianship that it has accomplished. 

This brings us back to the performance at St. Mary’s Church, Stoke Newington, on Saturday 5 October. The performance will represent a contrast in Victorian sound between the subtle and traditional Motets, and the bold, brash and fun Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Anton Bruckner’s Motets were written in the late 1800s, and express his devout Catholic beliefs. As such, they use long, Georgian chant-like lines, similar to those of the Renaissance masters. The harmonic shifts and compositional techniques display a romantic sensibility, using blocks of sound as a nod to his roots as an organ improviser.

‘Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast’ was composed by British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) and was so popular in the 1920s and 1930s, a fortnight’s-worth of performances were staged at the Royal Albert Hall every year, to large and enthusiastic audiences, who often dressed in native-American dress for the occasion! Once called the ‘Black Mahler’, Coleridge-Taylor was born in London, the illegitimate son of Daniel Hugh Taylor, a doctor from Sierra Leone, and Alice Martin, an Englishwoman, and studied at the Royal College of Music under Charles Villiers Stanford. Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast is the first of a trilogy of cantatas The Song of Hiawatha, telling the story of Native American Hiawatha, raised by his grandmother Nokomis on the shores of Lake Superior, and who married the Dakota maiden, Minnehaha.

40th Anniversary Party!

The Hackney Singers will be further celebrating its 40-year anniversary with a 1970s themed party in November.

Former members are requested to contact email Gill Brown chair@hackneysingers.org.uk with their early Hackney Singers memories, or sign up to the newsletter to be kept up to date with details of the 40th anniversary party.

* Tickets for Bruckner Motets and Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast on Saturday 5 October are available on the Hackney Singers website, http://hackneysingers.org.uk.