Farnham Youth Choir bags £1000 from Tesco’s community grant scheme

Farnham Youth Choir will receive £1000 that we will use to support our young singers to compete at the International Choral Competition in Hull in Spring 2023.

Co-Chair of Trustees, Melanie Hancox, said, “this grant helps to ensure that all our young singers can compete in the Interkultur International Choral Competition. FYC is a proudly inclusive choir that works hard to make sure that all young people with the interest and drive to become world-class choral singers, are able to achieve their ambitions. We’re extremely grateful for this boost to our fundraising.”

Singer, Lily, said, “winning gold medals at the European Choir Games in Gothenburg felt like winning the Olympics. It was an experience I’ll never forget.”

Claire de Silva, Tesco’s Head of Community, said: “Tesco Community Grants help support local good causes like Farnham Youth Choir and especially those projects supporting young people, those providing food, and local causes close to our colleagues’ hearts.”

Tesco Community Grants is run in partnership with community charity Groundwork, who has awarded grants to thousands of local community projects every year.

Tesco’s Community Grants scheme – previously Tesco Bags of Help - has already provided over £100 million to more than 50,000 projects across Britain. Funding is available to community groups and charities looking to fund local projects that bring benefits to communities. To find out more visit www.tesco.com/communitygrants.

New recording: Herstory out 1st March

We are very excited to announce the release of our latest recording: 'Herstory', coming out on 1st March. This mini-album consists of the three songs written by our composer in residence team for 2022, Russell Hepplewhite and Helen Eastman. The three songs each feature inspiring women scientists from history: Mary Anning, palaeontologist, Caroline Herschel, astronomer and comet-finder and Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughan, the so-called 'human computers' who calculated NASA's missions to the moon in the 1950s. The songs are: ‘Sea Shores’ about Anning, ‘Comet Crazy’ about Herschel and ‘In the Numbers’ about the NASA mathematicians.

Senior Choir singing ‘Sea Shores’ to Mary Anning’s statue

The whole period of Russell and Helen’s residency has been extremely enriching for our three choirs. Composer and librettist both came to meet our singers and answered some really thought-provoking questions about writing music and words. The three songs had their world premiere at our summer concert at the Menuhin Hall back in June 2022 and ‘Comet Crazy’ featured in our inaugural Singing Spree in the same month. Then all three choirs worked hard on the recordings in the weeks that followed. The Senior Choir had the added joy of being able to sing ‘Sea Shores’ to Anning’s recently unveiled statue in Lyme Regis back in the summer as part of their summer tour. We hope you’re going to enjoy these songs as much as we do and hope that you will add them to your playlists from 1st March on Spotify and YouTube.

We would also like to warmly thank Alton School for the loan of their drama studio as a location for these recordings. Without their generosity, the recording of these songs would have been impossible. www.altonschool.co.uk

Tesco Community Grant

We’re in the customer vote for a Tesco Community Grant. It’s a scheme which gives community projects like ours grants of up to £1,500. Tesco customers will now vote in:

• Aldershot, GU11 1SQ

• Fleet Ancells Farm, GU51 2XF

• Fleet Express, GU52 6AB

• Farnborough Cove Road, GU14 0EU

• Ridgeway Road Farnham, GU9 8NN

• Hale Farnham, GU9 0LA

• Ashvale Lysons Avenue, GU12 5QL

stores during October-December 2022 to decide how much funding we get, so please support us the next time (and every time) you shop at Tesco!

Funds from our current fundraising will go towards supporting our Senior Choir to compete at the International Choral Competition in Hull in 2023. This will be the choir’s long overdue return to competition, after their double gold medal winning appearance at the European Choir Games in Gothenburg in 2019.

Successful Cornwall Tour, August 2022

Early on Thursday 4th August, our Senior Choir assembled in Farnham ready to head west to beautiful Cornwall. This was the first real tour for the choir for three years, after our planned trip to the World Choir Games in 2020 had been COVID-cancelled. The tour bus stopped en route for the choir to sing a lunchtime concert in Exeter Cathedral, before continuing their journey to Falmouth. Singing in Exeter Cathedral was the first real experience of singing in a large venue for those of our singers who joined the choir after 2019, and it was certainly memorable for performers and audience alike.

The choir’s first Cornwall concert was on St Michael’s Mount on Friday. After some splashing about on the beach at Marazion, the singers climbed up the Mount to the chapel that crowns it. It was a very warm day and views from St Michael’s Mount were stunning. Somehow, all the stars aligned and the choir not only sang beautifully in the chapel, but their performance was live-streamed across the world. Our first live-stream! Our audience stretched from Farnham to Florida.

Saturday began with shopping and a picnic lunch in Falmouth, followed by ice cream and a busking concert in aid of the local RNLI.

There was more beach time on Sunday, followed by a magical joint workshop and concert with Cornwall County Choirs. We are so grateful to Angela Renshaw and her team for assembling 30 or so of their singers and for teaching ‘Cornwall My Home’ to our singers. Mylor church was such a welcoming venue and we were delighted that it was packed to the rafters for the evening concert.

Monday was a marathon singing day, as the choir busked around the far west of Cornwall. They started at the Minack Theatre, moved on to Land’s End and finished the day at Sennen Cove. Many of our Monday audiences weren’t expecting to hear a choir while sightseeing, but we definitely made some new fans along the way.

Tuesday was going home day and we bid a fond farewell to Falmouth. Again, we broke our journey by stopping off on the way, this time at Lyme Regis, where the choir sang ‘Sea Shores’ to the newly unveiled statue of Mary Anning. ‘Sea Shores’ is part of the ‘Herstory’ song cycle that we commissioned this year from our composer in residence, Russell Hepplewhite and librettist, Helen Eastman.

Our whole tour was made possible by the kindness and welcoming generosity of our various hosts: Exeter Cathedral, St Michael’s Mount, Falmouth RNLI, Mylor Church and Kay Deeming, Angela Renshaw and Cornwall County Choirs, the Minack Theatre, Land’s End and The Beach Bar, Sennen Cove and we extend our thanks to each of them. It was great to meet you all and none of us will forget our trip to Cornwall in 2022.

FYC have The X Factor

On 1st December 2018, Farnham Youth Choir took to the stage at one of the biggest live televised events of the year as part of the Live Final of ITV’s ‘The X Factor’ at Wembley Arena.

Forty choir members sang alongside finalist Scarlett Lee as she performed Sir Elton John’s Your Song, also featured in this year’s John Lewis Christmas advert and popularised by Ewan McGregor in the Baz Luhrmann film, Moulin Rouge.

FYC on stage with Scarlett Lee at Wembley Arena

With only 24 hours’ notice, FYC’s senior choir raced to join forces with Thames TV, recording a full studio version of the performance at Metropolis Studios, Chiswick. The following day, Saturday 1st December, the choir piled on to a coach for Wembley Arena, rehearsing during the day and singing in the live final at 7.30pm.

Performing as part of the first hour-long series finale, FYC shared the billing with the contestants, series judge Robbie Williams, global superstar George Ezra, Emile Sande and former X Factor winner Leona Lewis. Despite the watchful gaze of the series judges and music business supremo Simon Cowell, the choir’s performance lit up the arena.

Choir member Elliott Keys (11) who only joined the choir this year, said, ‘this is such a surreal experience, standing on the X-factor stage was breath-taking.’

For nearly 40 years Farnham Youth Choir have performed at the highest levels of choral excellence, singing at both The Vatican and Notre Dame in the past two years. FYC will be entering the Grand Prix of Nations & European Choir Games in Gothenburg in August 2019.

Summer Gala Concert 2017

The concert held on 8th July at Farnham Maltings had the usual celebratory feel, bringing all the choirs together on the stage and summing up what has been achieved during the past season. It is always lovely to see singers from age 6-18 performing with joy, directed by their various conductors and all ably accompanied by pianist Matthew Rickard.

The concert opened with a set from the senior FYC choir, directed by Jo Tomlinson, who sang several sacred pieces from the sixteenth century up to the present day, including the dramatic piece To Agni with text taken from the Hindu Rig Veda. The final piece in this first set was a World Premiere of And then we knew Peace by Janet Wheeler, commissioned by FYC.

Next to the stage came the crowd-pleasing Trainers Choir who despite their young ages performed wonderfully, with clear diction, good intonation and smiling faces! Conductor Sarah Burston has them well trained!

After the interval we were treated to songs in English and in French from the Junior Girls Choir, conducted by Jo McNally, followed by songs performed jointly by the Girls and the Junior Boys Choir, directed by Patrick Barrett. Both these choirs had enjoyed the opportunity to perform together this year in a new work, Dies Irae, by Ian Assersohn at Dorking Halls. As a thank-you for their dedication, Ian composed a setting of the words Silver by Walter de la Mare, and this was given a World Premiere performance with the composer present in the audience at the Maltings.

Patrick Barrett then directed the Boys Choir with songs in Congolese and Hebrew, followed by Panis Angelicus, ably assisted by the senior boys from FYC.

Jo Tomlinson conducted a set of lighter pieces from FYC to close the concert, including the quirky and demanding piece Wah Bah Dah Doo Bee! by the Swiss jazz composer Ivo Antognini and a charmingly choreographed version of Paloma Faith’s Upside Down, arranged by Michael Higgins who was present in the audience.

All choirs rose together to perform the final piece Goin’ Up a-Yonder which has been a favourite in the FYC repertoire for some time and brought tears to the eyes of the leavers!

Laura Brown