Professionals in the Arts in this country need more than ever to unite under one banner, and speak with one voice. Our continued existence depends on it.

For reasons of public health, the Performing Arts will be the last industry allowed to resume work in the U.K. Many performances, festivals, tours, stage shows etc have already been cancelled, to the end of this year and into 2021. The people affected are the people who run your choir, who teach music to your children, who sing in your carol service, who play in the band in your annual panto, who build the sets for that touring show your saw; or who danced in it, or who did the dancers’ hair and make-up. They are the backing singers in your favourite musical, and the ones who point the spotlights at the star of the show. They are the people who write the music for your favourite TV show, who record the theme for your grandkids’ favourite CBeebies programme. They are the people who sing in your local old people’s home, who run baby music classes at your local leisure centre, who take a choir once a week at your local primary school, who played in the string quartet at your wedding; and the people who sang so beautifully at your loved one’s funeral.

They are the people who share their love of their art, and who are unfortunate enough to be in an industry devastated beyond measure by the impact of Covid-19. They are part of the fabric of your life, every day, and they need help NOW.

We, the Arts professionals in this country, need right now to speak with one voice to those in power. We need the nation behind us. There are two million people in the U.K. who sing in a choir every week. We need their voices of support. We need to communicate our vital, essential function for our society; but we also need to offer proposals of what we can do in exchange for support. We need to show ourselves willing to reimagine what the Arts in this country can be and can do, and willing to abandon our own special silos and areas of self-interest. We need to go to Government with specific proposals. And we need above all to communicate clearly this central point: back in March, the public health crisis demanded that the Government prevented people from going to work, and so it invented the furlough scheme in order to compensate people; the Performing Arts are still not able to go back to work. and therefore we should continue to be compensated. And in exchange, we can dig deeper than ever before, to make this society a better place.

Since May of 2016, Battersea Power Station Community Choir has met every Thursday during term time, to sing, laugh, enjoy making music together and to enjoy each other’s company. All of that has now come to a temporary halt because of the Covid19 pandemic. So step forward the internet, and an online meeting platform called Zoom. On Thursday 19th March 2020, fifty four members of Battersea Power Station Community Choir met online for the first time. It was an opportunity to sing, to hear each other’s stories of what the past week has been like, and play a special “beat the intro” quiz. I know that many of my friends and colleagues who lead choirs are thinking of doing the same, so here are a few thoughts on the experience for those who might be interested in giving online choir rehearsals a try.

The Platform
I confess I hadn’t used Zoom before, but many of its features work really well for what were trying to do. Zoom easily accommodated the 54 choir members who dialled in. You can see either the person who is speaking, or use “gallery mode” to see a little square for each person. You can only see 20 squares at once, so I had to toggle through three pages to see everyone. A host sets up the meeting, and invites the members by email. It’s then as simple as clicking the link and entering the code to “join the meeting” and get the rehearsal going.

Tech requirements
I had Zoom up on my laptop, using my ipad for my music. I had my electric piano on the desk in front of me. The piano wasn’t plugged directly into the laptop; the laptop was just picking up the sound from the keyboard’s speakers. I did however have a pair of apple headphones with a built-in microphone. This enabled me to use one of the features of Zoom which is very important for an MD, called “Original Sound”. Zoom is optimised for speech, and can get overloaded when you’re trying to play piano and sing. Turning on “Original Sound” sorts out this problem. There are tutorials on Youtube showing you how to do this.

How the rehearsal ran
We began by everyone saying hi as they signed in, and spent a few minutes just letting everyone get used to the experience, as more and more people joined. Alex Baker from Battersea Power Station Development Company helps me run our choir (she does all the hard work!) and she was “hosting” the meeting. Alex was operating the functionality of Zoom, so I could get on with the musical side (more on this below). As more people join, the noise of everyone chattering starts to get overwhelming, so it is essential when you start the rehearsal that everyone is muted except the choir leader, and it’s the host who has the power to do this.
KEY TIP #1: The Music Director cannot be host as well, someone else needs to do this

I began by doing a standard warm up - stretches, vocal exercises etc. I could see everyone doing the stretches, but we didn’t unmute the choir members for this; I trusted they were doing it correctly and sounding good! I then began teaching them a new song, in the usual call-and-response style I use for community choirs. We did a verse and a chorus of “You’ve lost that lovin’ feeling” by The Righteous Brothers. Any fan of the 1980s classic “Top Gun” would know it. Again, we kept everyone muted while I did this. I trusted my instincts on how much repetition everyone would require to get familiar with the words, tune and rhythm. Also helping me out was our brilliant regular pianist Dan Swana. He was online, with his keyboard plugged in. After about ten minutes, I handed over to Dan to play (unmuted by Alex) and asked everyone to sing along with me. Keeping my vocals with Dan’s keyboard accompaniment proved tricky, because of the time delay (latency). Then came the moment of truth… Could we unmute everyone, and have the whole choir sing together from fifty four different locations across London? The short answer to this is no, not really. The technology just doesn’t support this at the moment. But the attempt was hilarious! And in a way, the point of getting everyone together wasn’t to try to replicate the usual rehearsal experience.
KEY TIP #2: It’s about more than just singing.

Beyond singing
We had planned from the start to make it as much a social experience as a musical one. After around 25 minutes of warm ups and singing, we had three members of the choir talk to everyone about their experiences of the past week - what their work has been like, how they and their loved ones are coping, and what they’ve been doing to keep their spirits up. They each had a song to share with the choir, and told everyone why they had chosen it. Then we played a 30 second snippet. It was lovely to be able to hear people’s stories, and it seemed to help everyone feel that they aren’t alone in dealing with these scary times.

We ended the session with a game. There is a “raise hand” function on Zoom, whereby you click a button and a little blue hand appears in your square on the screen. We used this to run a quiz. My friend Dan has several songs cued up, and played the intros and everyone then had to name the band and the song. The first person with their little blue hand on the screen got unmuted and gave their guess. This worked brilliantly, and was great fun.
KEY TIP #3: Be create in how you use Zoom!

Take-aways
1. There is so much you can do with this technology and this platform to bring your choir together, and you can do things that you probably wouldn’t do in your usual weekly rehearsal - even if you can’t quite have the experience of singing together.
2. Zoom is really easy to use once its set up, but some choir members may need help doing that.
3. The MD cannot do it all. You need at least one other person running it as “the host”, operating the mute button, helping choir members who are having tech issues etc. The MD has got too much else to do.
4. My choir members loved the experience. Of course it doesn’t beat being in a room together and hearing the sound of everyone’s voices together, but in these troubled times, it really seemed to lift everyone’s spirits.

Happy singing!

Sam