Case studies

How Hampshire Harmony, previously knows as the Basingstoke Ladies Choir, transformed their communication and strengthened their community — Hazel Green shares their experience. 

How did you manage the group before?

Our group had a very limited website, which made members feel a little distant from the choir; it wasn’t easy to use or edit and felt uninspiring, containing only three back-end sections.

Tim Davis of Birmingham Festival Choral Society tells us how his group go about organising their own tours. 

Tell us a little bit about your group

Birmingham Festival Choral Society is a friendly and enthusiastic SATB choir of around 110 members. We sing a wide variety of the world's best choral music! We perform regularly in Birmingham, sometimes elsewhere in the UK and every three years we organise a tour to Europe. 

We hear from groups about how they have managed to put on risk-assessed, COVID-secure performances for their audiences.

The pandemic has thrown all kinds of challenges in the way of group music making. However, our member groups have found ways to rehearse or safely put on performances whether entirely online, in person, or a combination of both - all while managing to mitigate the risks of Covid infection. Read about how they have done this in their own words.

Jennifer Bonsell from Aberdeen Chamber Music Concerts explains how her group collaborated with other local concert societies to share the work of putting on a virtual concert for their members.

Laura Mackay and Frank Althaus of Petros Singers tell us how they livestreamed their Covid-secure in-person rehearsals to members who were unable to attend in person.

Musical director of St Helens Ladies’ Choir, Patricia Lewis, describes her journey from having very little technological knowledge to running her choral group on Zoom during the pandemic.

Background

After early retirement from running a busy school music department and working with operatic societies, in 2011 I started a daytime weekly ladies’ choir in St Helens where I live. Many of our members do not read music and were technically inexperienced. From within the big choir we have a smaller choral group which also performs separately.

Alison Martin, chair of Crieff Choral Group, outlines how choir members got to grips with a new conductor during the first Covid lockdown. 

Background

Last year, all choir members attended our penultimate pre-lockdown rehearsal for our spring concert scheduled for 29 March 2020. It was going to be our last performance with our retiring conductor of 18 years, Peter Rutterford, and retiring chairman, John Drummond, who had served on the committee for 20 years. 

We hear from groups about how they have managed to put on risk-assessed, COVID-secure performances for their audiences.

Putting on a COVID-secure performance: Norwich Chamber Music  |  Putting on a COVID-secure performance: Witney Music Society

We hear from groups about how they have managed to put on risk-assessed, COVID-secure performances for their audiences.

Putting on a COVID-secure performance: Grayshott Concerts  |  Putting on a COVID-secure performance: Witney Music Society