Roar talent
Andrew Stewart reports on conductor Paul Mccreesh’s inspiring scheme to involve children in choral music
Ely Cathedral was the place to be on a hot summer’s day. Its old stones remained cool as the mercury soared. So too did the more than 200 youngsters gathered there to sing music from the past four royal coronations, as part of Gabrieli Roar. It was an irresistible, overwhelming, beautiful blast of exuberance, excellence and equality, better than a thousand TED talks and an infinity of meaningless management-speak about cultural education’s commercial benefits. This was a labour of love.
Gabrieli Roar is the brainchild of conductor Paul Mccreesh, who also founded the renowned professional ensemble the Gabrieli Consort.
Roar is a choral-training project open to children from all backgrounds, and is a potential lifechanger for those from the poorest. It stands against elitism and for excellence, at a time when it appears that the ladder of social mobility, viewed from the bottom at least, has had its lower rungs replaced by razor wire. How to restore them is no simple matter. The Sutton Trust’s Elitist Britain 2019 report noted that ‘those educated at independent schools and Oxbridge are over-represented’ in every profession, from politics and business to the media and the arts. But Mccreesh is doing his bit to widen access to top-grade opportunities in classical music.
The Gabrieli Consort and Mccreesh made their name with a 1990 recording of coronation music from high-renaissance Venice. With
‘‘There’s nothing elitist about classical music, unless you deprive children of the opportunity to connect with it ’’
their album An English Coronation 1902-1953 (reviewed in June 2019), they’ve returned to the genre in grand style, sparing nothing in pursuit of a vision of what music education at its best can be. In July 2018, young singers travelled to Ely to form an ace ensemble, emulating the parish choristers who came from all corners of the UK 65 years earlier to sing in the coronation at Westminster Abbey. In the rehearsals and public performance that accompanied the recording, Gabrieli Roar echoed the sounds and symbolism from another age, one in which royal ritual and power stood for a nation’s soul.
In many ways An English Coronation surpassed that landmark Venetian programme, and it took a strong stand against those who believe that aspiration and ambition belong to a privileged
few. ‘There’s nothing elitist about classical music, unless you deprive children of the opportunity to connect with it,’ says Mccreesh. Gabrieli Roar welcomes anyone, so long as they can sing. The Gabrieli Consort’s old Etonians mixed with young Bradfordians, while former Oxbridge choral scholars, seasoned orchestral players, and teenagers from 11 English youth and school choirs pulled together to perform a glorious patchwork of royal hits and rarities.
The music, drawn from the four royal coronations of the 20th century (see p69), included Parry’s I was glad from 1902 with fanfares from 1911, Vaughan Williams’s setting of The Old Hundredth, Stanford’s Coronation Gloria, Walton’s Te Deum and an arrangement of the National Anthem commissioned for Gabrieli Roar from David Matthews. Actor Simon Russell Beale took on the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury, reading prayers and exhortations.
‘It’s patently obvious that Roar children are the same mixture of shapes, sizes, races and colours that you’ll see walking down the average city high street,’ Mccreesh observes. ‘This culture is everybody’s. The beauty of the English coronation ritual and music is that it’s all-embracing, it tells a story about the place where we live. It’s a gift that the 20th-century coronations contained everything from plainsong to contemporary music, which gives enormous scope to engage youngsters.’
Gabrieli Roar grew from a multi-choir performance of Mendelssohn’s Elijah at the
BBC Proms nine years ago. Its credits since
include a BBC Music Magazine Award-winning recording of Britten’s War Requiem, and smaller bespoke projects with such Gabrieli partner choirs as the North East Youth Chorale, London Youth Choir and Bradford Catholic Youth Choir. An English Coronation involved children from varied backgrounds, some from struggling inner city boroughs, others from rural counties rarely touched by visiting professional orchestras or choirs. ‘This project was the big breakthrough,’ declares Mccreesh. ‘This is where my Gabrieli choristers, many of whom went to public school, realised what Roar was about and how privileged they are. The coronation music brought together people from every background to celebrate what they all love doing.’
‘There’s an almost superhuman quality to what Paul is doing,’ comments Simon Toyne, director of the David Ross Education Trust’s (DRET) All Star Choir. ‘The great thing about Gabrieli Roar is that it aims high, knowing what kids can do. We can easily talk down to children. But when you aim high, they always respond.’ His choir of 12 to 18 year-olds, recruited from schools in Northamptonshire, Leicestershire and Lincolnshire, made its public debut at Ely Cathedral. Chosen from DRET’S network of youth choirs, they came together for workshops and a residential course to prepare for the Ely concert and recording sessions. ‘Paul’s very smart as an educator,’ says Toyne. ‘He knows the awe-inspiring power of making music in a building that’s so unlike anything that most of these children know. Ely Cathedral inspired them to lift their game.’
Thomas Leech, director of the Schools Singing Programme for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Leeds, brought his Bradford girls’ choir to the Gabrieli Roar party. They stood beside Gabrieli Consort singers and got on with the job. ‘I hope that the background of professional musicians will one day look more like our youth choirs, where the mixture of cultures is so diverse,’ says Leech. ‘More than half our children are from black and ethnic minority backgrounds. To have access to Gabrieli Roar and be taken seriously is so important for the future of classical music.
‘We can easily talk down to children. But when you aim high they always respond’
By being taken seriously, our young singers took it seriously and pushed themselves to such a high level, even when they’d been up all night chatting to their mates!’
It was clear that Gabrieli Roar participants were valued, their capabilities trusted, their age and inexperience recognised and respected. Leech confides that several of his choristers are no strangers to poverty. ‘They’ll all remember that concert,’ he says. ‘It was so moving. All of those kids deserve access to this kind of cultural experience, that level of trust, regardless of background. Gabrieli delivered the project to partner choirs at £25 per child. When you have parents choosing between food or new shoes for their children, that’s a huge boost.’
For Mccreesh, the project was both exhilarating and exhausting. He was involved in fundraising, oversaw the preparation process and inspired Gabrieli Roar from the podium.
‘It nearly killed me! But it’s such a powerful statement of what young people can achieve. What we’re saying is come into our world of professional music and, with the right repertoire and training, you can contribute on our level. I expect the highest standards and know they will reach them. It’s about raising the bar with a certain amount of toughness and a lot of love.’ Feedback from the young singers backs this up, with comments ranging from ‘The sound we made was incredible and gave me goosebumps’ to the succinct ‘Fun, fun, fun!’
This year Gabrieli Roar took a version of An English Coronation, abridged for choir, organ, brass ensemble and percussion, on outings to Northampton and London. And Mccreesh is ready to lead Roar’s most ambitious venture to date in July 2020 when he leads 300 teenagers from Gabrieli partner choirs in a public performance of Elgar’s oratorio The Dream of Gerontius, also at Ely Cathedral.
The debate about music education too often sets the economic worth of making music above all. The impact of Gabrieli Roar’s Ely recording sessions was more intangible, harder to measure; it was about personal confidence, collective endeavour, a shared sense of creative play and being part of something outside the ordinary. Mccreesh knows that Gabrieli Roar depends on music remaining alive in state schools, a condition threatened not least by the loss of so many secondary school music teachers.
‘The Roar kids were fantastic,’ he says. ‘These moments of connection are so important. They are ordinary children doing extraordinary things. The beauty of Gabrieli Roar is that we’re working in the state sector with choirs run by inspirational people. Our job is to support them and build on what they do. If I had the budget,
I’d do nothing else – I would run Roar across the year and involve thousands of kids. We can only hope that people notice what we do and help us do more of it.’
Two hundred choristers from cathedral and parish choirs took part in Elizabeth II’S coronation service, each issued with a commemorative medal. Every Gabrieli Roar participant received a copy of their coronation album on Mccreesh’s Winged Lion label. The double-disc set, with essay, interviews, full texts, bibliography, performer lists and photographs, is a beautiful product, offering a lifetime of joyful listening. The House of Windsor should surely book Gabrieli Roar for the next coronation.