Since childhood, I never expected to be any good at singing. When I was in junior school – I think it must have been about 1970, when I would have been eight – one of the music teachers told me to stop singing because I was flat. I took her at her word, and that was it for over 20 years. As a teenager I learned the piano and then the flute, and I took my flute with me to Bristol University. I never quite made it into an orchestra, although I did play in church, and I looked enviously at friends in the various choral societies.
It took a journey across the Atlantic to change me. My second post-doc was at the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Maryland, a small, friendly city about 50 miles from Washington DC. When I arrived in November 1990 I knew about half a dozen people in the whole country, and no one at all in Frederick. On my first Sunday, I went to a church that another of the young scientists had recommended to me. She introduced me to one of her friends, Denise Achey (now Berry), who was the church’s musical director and conducted its adults’ and children’s choirs. When Denise asked me to join the adult choir I accepted gratefully, but only because I thought it would be a good way to make friends. Denise, it turned out, was one of those rare people who could get music out of the most unlikely people. I sang in my first service on Christmas Eve, and that choir was a mainstay of my friendship group for the remainder of my time in Frederick. My first ‘big’ choral work was the Messiah parts 1 and 2 the following Easter.
I have sung in choirs for most of the time since my American adventure, although – perhaps looking back to that abashed eight-year-old – I still freeze at any thought of auditioning. I have been delighted to share my husband Aidan’s hobby (he sings second tenor with the Cambridge Phil, which does audition). And Royston has been an ideal non-audition choir for me: it feels a very long way from two-thirds of a Messiah to the St Matthew Passion.