Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
WE GOT THE KEYS TO THE KINGDOM
Their spine-tingling performance at Harry and Meghan’s wedding has turned The Kingdom Choir into instant celebrities. Here they give Richard Barber the inside story on the big day
There’s no missing Karen Gibson. With her rumbling laugh and plaited silver hair piled high on her head, she’s never mistaken for anyone else. Nonetheless, she used to be able to go about her business in public pretty much as she pleased.
All that changed, though, on a sunny day in May when Prince Harry married the then Meghan Markle at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, and an estimated two billion people around the world witnessed Karen, 55, conducting The Kingdom Choir with their spine-tingling rendition of Ben E King’s hit, Stand By Me.
‘If I’d been sitting here six months ago,’ she says now, tucked into a corner of a café in Clapham, ‘I could never have dreamt of all the things that have happened in so short a space of time. And it’s a blessing, although not without its challenges.’
Most television viewers made the easy assumption that, like the charismatic preacher Rev Michael Curry, the choir hailed from America’s Deep South. In reality, they hail deep from the heart of south London. It was Karen who formed the choir in the mid-1990s when she was still working, unhappily, in IT. Five years later, she was made redundant but was able to follow her passion full-time.
‘I belong to a Pentecostal church called The God of Prophecy with its own District Choir in London. I was called in to help with various choirs around the capital’s churches, aug- menting them where necessary with members from the District Choir. Then, one day, one of these choirs was invited to sing on the BBC’s Songs Of Praise in celebration of their 35th birthday. I had to find a name for them overnight. It came to me in a dream: The Kingdom Choir.’
Membership grew and the choir now boasts 32 singers at full strength. Down the years, they’ve performed not only at weddings but also at more high-profile events like a VE Day concert and at the Queen’s Golden Jubilee celebrations in 2002.
Then came the day in March when Karen was standing in her kitchen, minding her own business, and the telephone rang. The caller was an old friend who had connections with Prince Charles’s household. ‘She told me to prepare myself for a very important invitation. I thanked her and didn’t give it another thought until I was on the top deck of a bus a few days later and my mobile rang.’
The caller was Eva Williams, Deputy Communications Secretary to the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall. Would The Kingdom Choir like to sing at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle? ‘My initial reaction was to ask if she was joking. My question was met with silence. So I said, “You’re not joking, are you?”’ It’s thought that Prince Charles, a fan of gospel music, recommended the choir to his son and future daughter-in-law.
Karen had a visit to St George’s Chapel to check out the acoustics
before lining up her choristers for the big day without being able to tell them why. ‘I just asked them to keep 19 May free and I left it to them to work out what was going on. But two weeks later, I was told I could announce it to the choir as long as they told no one.’
Karen and six of her choristers were then invited to Kensington Palace to meet Harry and Meghan and to discuss the arrangement of Stand By Me. ‘They were lovely: relaxed and friendly and obviously very much in love. The thing that struck me most was how normal they seemed. We were there for about an hour, chatting over tea and biscuits. And we sang a little for them.’
The royal couple liked what they heard. ‘But, when we sent them a CD of our finished arrangement, they thought it was too much, too elaborate. Not the strippedback sound they were looking for.’ There followed much to-ing and fro-ing between them all.
Indeed, it wasn’t until the tenth version of the song that Harry and Meghan declared themselves happy with the arrangement. ‘It was quite a long way from our gospel roots but it’s what they wanted. And they were right: it was in keeping with the rest of the service.’
Ask Karen to choose one word to describe the day itself and she doesn’t hesitate. ‘Magical,’ she says, ‘although I wasn’t nervous. We were all ready. We knew what we were doing. I’ve watched it many times since and I honestly thought we gave the best that
we could.’ And the royal couple obviously liked it. ‘They sent us a letter thanking us for contributing so beautifully, they said, to their special day.’
Then the world went nuts. ‘It started the moment we left the chapel. Nobody gave us a second look when we walked in to St George’s. Now, everyone was clamouring for autographs and selfies. We had to be escorted by bodyguards, for heaven’s sake. By the end of the day, our website had crashed.’
It didn’t stop there. Top British talent manager Jonathan Shalit secured a record deal with Sony. Stand By Me, the album, was released at the end of October, just as the choir were returning from Sydney having performed at the closing ceremony of Prince Harry’s Invictus Games for injured ex-servicemen and women. Next up, the choir will perform on Strictly Come Dancing tomorrow. They will also star in Coca-Cola’s iconic Christmas TV commercial, taking on Elton John for John Lewis and Take That for M&S in the traditional festive battle. Shown across 16 European countries, the advert will be backed by a budget of £50 million.
Then, next spring, comes an 18-date UK tour to include a concert at the Royal Albert Hall on 19 May, on the first anniversary of Harry and Meghan’s wedding. Does Karen think they’ll attend? ‘Well, they live just down the road,’ she says, with a twinkle, ‘so who knows?’
She never stops thanking God. So what are the challenges that come with all this good fortune? ‘When you move into a different space, your mind has to change accordingly. You have to expand your thinking to negotiate the new path you’re taking. But, as Jonathan Shalit keeps telling me, these are good problems. My attitude is that, if people come up to me to say thank you or give me a hug, that’s a gift. Something happened on 19 May that really resonated with the viewing public. And I cannot say enough good things about Meghan being a woman of colour and the influence of that on people’s perception of the Royal Family.
‘It’s been good for Britain, too. We’re a multicultural society and, now that she’s become a public figure, it demonstrates our diversity and inclusivity. A member of the choir has a four-year-old daughter. When she saw us singing on the telly, she said, “Look Mummy, those people look like me.” That small statement was huge.’
For details about the album and tour, visit kingdomchoir.com.
‘It struck me how normal Meghan and Harry were’