Inside MORE
Sting sings for his soul with his local choir
Lockdown has brought a sense of thoughtful reflection to one of the world’s greatest singer-songwriters, and inspired him to record a song with his local community choir. Famed for classics
such as Every Breath You Take and Message In A Bottle with his band The Police, and solo hits including Englishman In New
York and Fields Of Gold, Sting has now revived the haunting anthem Hymn that he wrote for his musical The Last Ship – and asked his local choir in Battersea, south London, to record it with him.
The Last Ship first sailed in Chicago in 2014 before transferring to Broadway later that year and docking at Dublin’s Bord Gáis Energy Theatre in 2018. It embarked on another US tour this year, but that was cut short when the pandemic hit. The show is about the demise of the shipbuilding communities on Tyneside, and was inspired by Sting’s childhood in Wallsend, Tyne and Wear, and particularly his relationship with his father who had been an engineer in a family of shipwrights.
‘I did everything in my power to escape Wallsend. I became successful, but I owe a debt to that community,’ he said when the show opened. ‘This play is me trying to honour that community, to pay back what they gave me – a sense of self but also the engine that allowed me to escape. That’s the paradox. I love where I come from, I’m glad I escaped, at the same time I need to tell that story as a sort of “soul debt”.’ Sting received two Tony nominations for
The Last Ship but Hymn, which originally opened the show, was cut when the production was rejigged. Now he has composed a new arrangement of the song, layered with harmonies evoking the feel of a lullaby and a prayer, especially for the Battersea Power Station Community Choir, which rehearses in the shadow of the iconic building overlooking the Thames where Sting now lives.
I have been a member on and off ever since Alex Baker, who works for the power station developers, started it in 2016. We rehearse in a community centre with our conductor Sam Evans, and instead of using classical terms such as soprano, alto, tenor and bass to describe our voices – we call ourselves Whitneys (after Whitney Houston), Lulus and Freddies (after Freddie Mercury). I’m a Lulu, and my husband Neil is a Freddie. It’s grown from 14 members to more than 70, all locals living in and around the power station.
We are a diverse bunch of all ages (our youngest member is six), backgrounds and ethnicities, and we’ve sung with some big names in some great venues. TV’s most famous choirmaster Gareth Malone invited us to perform in a flash mob at the opening of The Ned, a new hotel in the City of London three years ago in the presence of Princess Eugenie and actors Eddie Redmayne, Woody Harrelson and Simon Pegg. Then Gareth invited us to sing live at his Christmas concert at Alexandra Palace in 2018. We’ve performed at the Royal College of Art and the Victoria & Albert Museum, and when Sting heard our version of Labi Siffre’s hit
Something Inside So Strong, a tribute to the
NHS, he suggested a collaboration.
But when he joined us for one of our rehearsals, which have been held over Zoom for the past few months, we couldn’t believe it. There he was in his recording studio, telling us how excited he was about the project.
HE WAS ACTUALLY THANKING US FOR THE OPPORTUNITY TO SING WITH HIM
YOU LOVED THE PIECE AND SAID YOU WOULD MAKE A GREAT FIST OF IT
He picked up his guitar and started singing the ballad he had written about the dangers sailors face at sea. We were at our own private concert, listening to him quietly strumming and singing, his face beaming live into our homes. We were mesmerised. ‘And as ye sleep, the angels round thee have brought ye safely home across the ocean,’ he sang. ‘Rest ye well all those who toil upon the sea.’
He told us his musical was about the stresses communities face. ‘It’s the subject of our play, but also what’s happening in the world,’ he said. ‘We need our communities more than ever. I need this as much as any of you so thank you for the opportunity.’
He was actually thanking us for the opportunity to sing with him! How special was that?
Angie Conway, a children’s counsellor and founder member of the choir, told him how important singing was to her too. ‘It is what I look forward to each week,’ she said. ‘Music has been my soul. I’m not a great singer but for so many people from different backgrounds to sing together is such a powerful thing. I feel blessed to collaborate with you.’
Accountant Adam Williamson has sung with the choir for three years but grew up singing with big church choirs. ‘I stopped in my twenties but I’m so glad to be back singing,’ he said. ‘People talk about community choirs and diversity – this is the most diverse group of people I interact with on a regular basis. It is so important we meet people we would not normally meet.’
Sting became a global star with his band The Police, one of the world’s most successful ever with 75 million albums sold, before enjoying huge solo success. He had spent many years living in New York, and he also has homes in Wiltshire and the Lake District in England, Malibu and Tuscany, but in 2014 he and his wife Trudie Styler bought an apartment at Battersea Power Station, in the heart of a thriving community.
‘I live in Battersea now,’ he told us. ‘We have an apartment and look at one of those wonderful chimneys, which is an iconic sight to wake up to. Battersea is the first place I lived when I moved to London in the 70s, so I’ve come full circle and I’m back in Battersea and happy to be part of a community.’
Interestingly, the power station now brings back memories of the community where he grew up.
‘It reminds me, strangely enough, of my home next to the shipyard,’ he mused to us. ‘The power station looks like a giant ship, with those chimneys going into the river.’
Now he has joined our community and is making music with his community choir.
‘I’d written Hymn as a choral piece and presented it to you and you loved it and said you would make a great fist of it,’ he told our conductor Sam Evans.
Sam then began teaching us the individual singing parts Sting had written for us Whitneys, Lulus and Freddies.
We had to memorise them and video-record ourselves on our phones, singing along to the track, then send them back to Sting.
We next saw Sting – the soloist – at our rehearsal to hear the final recording that his technicians and our own audio editor Dan Swana had ‘knitted’ together so we all blended. We were also joined by members of the cast of his show, who sang with us on the track.
We were so excited. It was the first time we’d heard the recording and I had goosepimples. Would he like it? Happily he loved it, and confessed that he was even ‘a little overcome’.
We were overcome too. Our singing had moved one of the greatest rock stars in the world. It doesn’t get much better than that. Except perhaps to perform it live with him some time in the future.
Hymn – The Last Ship by Sting and The Battersea Power Station Community Choir is available to watch on YouTube