New musical director for The Sandgate Choir
Christopher Larley is the new musical director with The Sandgate Choir, a four-part choir with a current membership of around 50 singers.
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00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Lovely today
00:06to speak to Chris Larley, who is the new Musical Director of the newly renamed Sandgate Choir.
00:12Now, tell me about the challenge. What kind of choir is this and why are you looking forward
00:17to doing it?
00:18Well, I feel like I've been off the scene for a little while from conducting choirs.
00:24I've always been conducting St Paul's Church Choir now since 2004. But in 2015, after I'd
00:30had 16 really happy years with the Chantry Choir, I took on a full-time job at Great
00:35Ballard School to be their Director of Music and I couldn't be going out two or three evenings
00:39a week doing choirs. And so I've had a few years off and suddenly this job came up and
00:44someone alerted me to it and I thought, this sounds like the sort of choir that I want
00:48to do just to sort of get back into it and to go out for another evening.
00:52And what I've learned through my church choir, and probably what I didn't know maybe 20 years
00:59ago, that a choir is just much more than a group of people coming to sing once together
01:05every week. It's a sense of sort of community. And I saw on their website that they sort
01:13of call themselves the Community Choir and that can mean many, many sort of different
01:17things. And from what I've experienced from the interview procedure that I had, and then
01:22going to conduct my first rehearsal on Monday night, is that this is a choir which is an
01:27incredibly sort of friendly group, but the friendships seem to go beyond the boundaries
01:33of the rehearsal. And that for me then sort of conjures up this sort of sense of community.
01:39It's at the heart of Storrington, that's the area where it is.
01:42So what's your role when you come in? Do you just take stock and try and build on what's
01:46there? Or do you think of new directions, new opportunities?
01:50Well, the pandemic has had a bit of adverse effect on the choir. I think numbers have
01:57dropped from when, you know, pre-pandemic. And this has happened quite a lot around the
02:00sort of country. Singing, people were quite scared of singing. It was the one thing that
02:06was hit really hard during the pandemic. But people are slowly starting to sort of come
02:10out of the sort of woodwork and realise that how good singing is. My job is, as its conductor,
02:19it might go in a different direction. That's what I'm sort of hoping. We do sort of three
02:24concerts a year, which sort of tailor three different sort of things. So we have a Christmas
02:28concert. The springtime concert will be what you would call your classical concert, where
02:34we would do a bigger traditional work. And then our summer concert is sort of more lighthearted
02:40and split up into sort of three thirds, where we'll do some classical music. We'll do then
02:44some sort of theme. And then we'll do some more sort of what you would call secular sort
02:49of repertoire. So there's a little bit for everybody. But my job as well is just to make
02:54people happy, uplifted when they leave their rehearsal, because they pay money to be in
02:59these sort of choirs. They don't want to be shouted out by some sort of dictatorial
03:03choir master. I don't think I've ever done that.
03:05It doesn't sound like you anyway, does it?
03:07No, no. Thank you very much, Phil. No, no, I certainly not. And so it's sort of passing
03:13on my knowledge, which is now because I've turned 50 this year, and I've been in this
03:18game in some shape or form singing since the age of six. And, you know, in all different
03:22parts of the country, either standing in front of a choir or singing in a choir, just I love
03:29it. And I want people to love it as well and know that when they're doing it, the often
03:35spoken about health benefits, you know, that go with it are so important in this day and
03:40age.
03:41Fantastic. Well, good luck in the new role. Lovely to speak to you, Chris. Thank you.
03:45Thanks very much.