How do you start a choir?

By Sarah Keast

I have always sung. I started from childhood when my mum taught us to sing in harmony (mainly because she wanted to). I sang in local choirs as a teenager, then in small groups and bigger choirs as an adult.  I moved to Moniaive back in 2004 with two small children and there was a great choir called The Feral Choir which I wanted to join but they met in Castle Douglas and I didn’t have childcare that allowed me to travel that far.  I kept thinking it would be nice to sing locally and I kept meeting other people who thought the same.   

In 2006 I somehow agreed to be the treasurer of the folk festival in the village. I got together with musician Wendy Stewart and historian Alyne Jones around my kitchen table.   We sat down to work out a budget and plan events for the folk festival.    As we discussed the festival funding  Alyne made the precocious suggestion that some of the funding we ask for could be to start an embryonic community choir in Moniaive “Maybe funding to pay a choir leader for 10 or 12 practices and our debut performance could be the opening event of the folk festival in 2007”.  The idea stuck and we put it in the funding applications. Alyne and Wendy also set up an important founding principle:  "this choir must be run by the members, for the members and we will hire our choirmaster".   As an afterthought (a genius afterthought!) we stuck in a request for some extra funding to keep the practices going for a few months after the folk festival so that the choir didn't just end after that first performance.   

12 local people came along to sing in that very first iteration of the choir, practicing in the café area of the George Hotel after the carpet bowls had finished, and we did indeed open the folk festival by singing a punchy and loud Sami reindeer herding song.  I was watching the reaction in the audience.  Expectations were low, locals thought we might be a good laugh, but when the initial song rang out jaws literally dropped with surprise.  We only had a handful of songs ready but we had some great voices in our midst and the tunes had been well chosen for the small group.  Our initial performance was sufficient to lead lots of new people to come and sing with us.  So we had done it. We started a choir.  In 2027 Cairn Chorus will be 20 years old.   Of the 12 initial singers who started the choir 8 are still singing with us today. Our membership regularly reaches 50 singers and the choir is an amazing community of people who are united by love of singing together!    How do you start a choir?  Three women round a table with cups of tea!!!