Our choir was formed in 1969 and developed over a 40 year period under the stewardship of its Musical Director, Mrs Ceridwen Constantine, which saw the choir singing a wide variety of songs and developing a repertoire of over 200 pieces. The choir is non- competitive and its main aim is “singing for pleasure”.
Mrs Constantine’s strong musical background of Welsh choral singing and her formal music training at the Northern School of Music in Manchester helped to ensure the choirs success, with an emphasis on the thorough learning of pieces and stage performances without the use of musical copy, ensuring that all attention was focused on the director during a performance so that songs came truly ‘from the heart’.
As Musical Director Ceri oversaw the release of three recordings, “Singing for Pleasure”, recorded at the William Brookes School, Much Wenlock, in 1975. “Were You There”, recorded in Birmingham in 1980 and “On Wenlock Edge”, recorded at the William Brookes School, Much Wenlock in 1996.
In 2010 Mrs Constantine retired as Musical Director and Paul Kelly was appointed to the position, following a selection process involving several candidates, which saw Paul enthusiastically confirmed by choir members as the new director.
On taking up the post Paul studied the choir’s repertoire and selected 50 pieces to be maintained and developed. The choir plans to develop about 16 pieces that could ultimately be recorded and released as a CD.
Paul’s vision for the choir’s future is to give greater time to developing and improving acoustic “tone”, using a series of exercises and increased practice of harmonic vowel sounds, scales and rounds. Pauls view is that we should work on developing joint concerts with other choirs and instrumental groups.
The choir would like to increase active membership, allowing more scope to broaden the range of material we can cover, so do come and join us. We really do welcome new members of all abilities; anyone who wants to learn and has an open mind can learn to sing. There is a great sense of camaraderie.
Call our choir secretary, Harry King, on 07852 991910 for more details, or e-mail us at mwmvc2@fsmail.net.