I've fallen into singing by accident
I’ve fallen into singing more or less by accident. When I retired I wanted to learn piano and organ and, for a grade exam in piano, you have to do echo singing which was problematic for me. It was decided I should get some singing lessons and so found a teacher who is incredibly rigorous but it’s also a lot of fun at the same time. I now do more singing than piano. Other than that, I’ve not sung since my voice broke!
After an interval of nearly 55 years, I’m really enjoying the singing. I had an unhappy experience with another choir and, in comparison, joining Royston Choral Society has been a good experience – I’m still here!
I haven’t sung the Brahms Requiem before – it’s challenging but that’s something that’s good for me, forcing me to count. My background is in mathematics and physics but I have difficulty counting and this is really good for making me get it right. Science, my background, is all about attention to details and, yes, I’m a perfectionist.
Rehearsing with the choir is a real pleasure. I’m very impressed by the size of the choir and by members' regular attendance. In other choirs, some weeks so few men turned up that it felt almost as if the basses were singing as soloists!
I don’t come from a musical family. My entire life has been in science, I never thought in retirement I’d be more into arts and humanities – it’s not something I ever envisaged.
I found my way to the Royston Choral Society through another choir member who was at a U3A (University of the Third Age) group. We got talking about singing with a choir and he mentioned the RCS… and here I am!