Читать книгу Choir: Gareth Malone - Gareth Malone - Страница 9

I am not ashamed to admit that on the night after the Northolt Phoenix Choir performed at the World Choir Games in China, I ended up crying my eyes out. I’m a crier, don’t get me wrong, but this was different. I blubbed. Sobbed. All the pressure, all the tension, all the responsibility I had been carrying for nine months flooded out of me like a dam bursting.

We had done our competition performance early that morning. Bearing in mind that there was eight hours’ time difference, I don’t think any of us even knew what day it was. The results of the first round were due out later that evening. I had spent a lot of the intervening time marching up and down a huge flight of steps in front of the Xiamen People’s Hall for some shots that the film crew needed, so I was feeling physically exhausted.

I hadn’t had any dinner, and, believe me, I’m not good when I haven’t eaten any dinner. By the time the results came out it was a quarter to ten. It came up on a plasma screen inside this edifice to communism. I shrugged and thought about my stomach.

We hadn’t got through. I felt quite sanguine about it; I didn’t think we deserved it. We weren’t as good as the others, but the choir had genuinely given it their very best shot and I loved them for that, because so many of them had worked harder on this than anything else in their lives. I know I had.

I went back to the hotel where all the kids were waiting to hear whether we had made it through to the second round. I didn’t beat about the bush: I let them know as simply and straightforwardly as I could that we were out of the competition and going home with a certificate. They were also totally fine about it: I had prepared them well for the possibility. And then a few of the kids, Rhonda, Laura and Jerry, came up to me and said, ‘We don’t want you to go. We want you to stay.’

And those few words did it. I was absolutely broken by them. I started to cry. And once I started, I couldn’t stop. I wasn’t crying because we hadn’t made it through. It was because of a whole collection of different emotions.

I had grown fond of the choir and I knew that this was a finite project. Even though I had arranged for the school’s choir to continue, I felt like I was leaving them and that was something I was really ambivalent about. On top of all that was a major dose of jetlag, as well as the release of all the tension, and sheer relief at having got to the end of this journey with the pressure of all the scrutiny I had been under, with television cameras observing me close up for nine months.

I was also going to be leaving the TV crew I had got to know so well: Ludo the director, Sam the sound guy, Dave the cameraman; these great guys I had spent so much time with. I had no idea if I would ever shoot another day of TV again.

And I was sobbing because I was thinking, ‘Look what these kids achieved, look how much they are transformed by this, look how they feel about being in a choir now.’ And in that moment I felt angry too. Angry that more young people didn’t have this kind of life-changing opportunity. It was a seminal moment that would change the course of my career and my life. There is no word for the emotion I felt that evening: a mixture of pride, relief and loss but above all happiness that it had worked. I was happy for these kids.

As I sat there bawling my eyes out, the indefatigable soundman Sam Mathewson began to mist up, as did the supposed man of iron, the director Ludo Graham. Only the cameraman stayed dry-eyed. Dave Wickham: seen it all, hard as nails …

It had been a brilliant idea to aim for the Phoenix Choir to compete in the World Choir Games – a very creative and very televisual decision by Ana DeMoraes to set an overly ambitious goal. It was a real game-changer, and it seemed to be perfect timing. You couldn’t open a paper in 2006 without reading about China, about the coming Olympics in Beijing, about what an amazing, emerging economy China was and how the country would be the dominant force in the century.

I had sent the application off in early January, crossing my fingers as I dropped it into a post box somewhere near the school after a late rehearsal. I genuinely didn’t know if we would be allowed into the competition. As part of the application we had to supply a photo of the choir. A couple of them were embarrassed that it was shot by the basketball courts and we looked quite scruffy, but in fact I felt that sent out a strong message to the Choir Games organisers about who the choir were, that the Phoenix Choir was not a bunch of chorally educated kids, just regular kids who had decided to sing.

The Choir Games rules meant I also had to decide on our repertoire for the competition at the time of the application. There were a number of constraints: there had to be pieces in a foreign language, from before the twentieth century, and only one free choice. The programme I had chosen included Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, Fauré’s ‘Cantique de Jean Racine’, ‘Fairest Isle’ by Purcell, and Stevie Wonder’s ‘Isn’t She Lovely?’. I was creating this for a choir who at the time could not sing in parts very effectively, where I didn’t have enough guys for the tenor and bass parts, so it was no mean feat to try and find pieces I thought they might be able to sing six months down the line.

I remember several people who watched the programme thought that it was a forgone conclusion. Surely with the might of the BBC the choir would be a shoo-in? Well if it was, nobody told me and I had a nervous wait with the rest of the choir while our application was processed.

I honestly didn’t open the letter which told us the result until I was with the choir. Watching it back now, I can see genuine relief on my face. I shot a glance off-camera to the production team. If they’d known already, they did a bloody good job of keeping it from us. Besides, it wouldn’t have been the same if I’d already known and the choir didn’t: we had to go through the experience together.

The choir had been accepted and we all felt exhilarated. It was around this time, however, that we realised there was a second round to try and get through to. That was when it got competitive.

Inevitably we had a few bumps along the road to China. One that completely caught me unawares was when Josh and his sister Ashley told me they could sing nothing of a religious nature because they were Jehovah’s Witnesses. This was tricky because in the programme I had already submitted, the ‘Cantique de Jean Racine’ was based on a Matins hymn, and the Purcell piece was about the goddess Venus. I did point out that Venus was from antiquity and that as far as I knew no one worships her any more, that it was a myth, a legend – but they’re weren’t having any of it. They were being extra-careful. They had suddenly realised that they were about to be singing very publicly indeed and, as Jehovah’s Witnesses, wanted to err on the side of caution because they have strict ideas about what is and isn’t acceptable singing material.

I spoke to some colleagues who taught singing and asked them what my options were. They all said, there is nothing you can do. In the event, Josh decided to quit long before the China trip, not because of the religious issue but because, as he put it so damningly, it was ‘getting a bit long’. However Ashley chose to stay, but not to sing the two religious songs. I was an alto down for my two most difficult pieces, but it wouldn’t have been fair to Ashley to force the issue.

Another rocky moment was when we made the decision to re-audition the entire choir. A few of the singers – and it was definitely a minority – seemed to be taking part for the wrong reasons. This manifested itself in their general attitude to the rehearsals: they were not turning up or, if they did, quite frankly not putting in much effort. I remember another chorister called Ashley (this one a boy) saying, ‘I am in it for the China …’ Any teacher knows that this attitude can be toxic in a group. I did my very best to encourage him to have a more positive attitude but, alas, he floated away from us.

What I had not predicted was the appeal of appearing on television. Not only had it enthused 160 auditionees, but many of those who were in the choir were only there so that they could have their five minutes of fame. But this was not the ‘low budget X-Factor’ they thought it was – this was real, it was hard work. They were learning to become a choir. Some of them didn’t care and I knew it.

So it felt morally right to me to make sure, on behalf of the ones who really were pulling their weight, that everyone deserved and justified their place on the plane. I was quite prepared to be flexible about the standard if I felt that the effort was there: Enock Chege, for example, who had originally been one of my five reserves, was not fantastic when he re-auditioned, but I felt I wanted to have him on the trip because he was so enthusiastic and positive about the challenge. At the very first audition he said he was going to give it ‘my best voice, my best concentration.’ And he did.

The re-auditioning process was a tough sell to the school, who preferred a more broad-access policy. They felt I should have got it right the first time (as did many people who wrote to me afterwards). How could I? How could I have known, based on a five-minute audition, who would prove to have the stamina? I suppose that’s the kind of background I’m from: if you don’t put the effort in, you don’t get the rewards. I had to be ruthless.

Some didn’t make it in because musically they had failed to get hold of the notes. Raul, for example, continued to struggle and it was becoming obvious to the rest of the choir that he couldn’t sing the parts. These were awful decisions. But this was the situation I found myself in and I was determined to make the best of it.

The contrast between those who were committed and those who had lost interest was most marked between Ahmed and Jack. At the 11th hour and after months of me badgering him Ahmed said he was only doing it for his parents. Jack was understandably as completely gobsmacked as I was. He looked at Ahmed in disbelief. ‘I really, really want to go,’ he said, and he meant it. I felt Jack’s attitude was to be rewarded, whereas to be involved in this fantastic opportunity because you thought you could please your parents seemed to me a completely misguided reason. You can’t sing for your parents, you have to sing for yourself. I didn’t want a choir full of conscripts. I wanted it to be full of kids who really desperately wanted to be in it. Crucially, because his heart wasn’t in it Ahmed hadn’t learnt the music. Exit Ahmed.

But some of them really cared. When Kodi Bramble walked out and slammed the door – smashing the glass, by the way – he did so because of simmering tensions in the choir between the different sections: the altos were finding it easy, but the tenors were often a man or two down and finding the parts a challenge. Kodi, however, was highly musical and wanted to get it right. He is now a professional rock drummer, with tattoos to match, but he had a pleasant tenor voice and a damn good ear. I’m not sure how much he appreciated his nickname of ‘door slammer Kodi’.

At one rehearsal, as time was running out, I lost it in front of the choir. They were not focusing, they were messing around. ‘Excuse me!’ I yelled. ‘That is the only time you will hear me shout. You are being utterly discourteous. One more time and I will walk out.’ It was classic denial behaviour: there was so much at stake and yet they were merrily wasting time. They needed to be reminded of what they’d agreed to. It brought them up sharp.

Rhonda had doubted that I had it in me: ‘At our school you needed to be tough with people,’ she said to me with a worldly air. ‘I didn’t know if you would be able to be tough with anyone. And maybe it would be a bit of an easy ride.’ They underestimated me. I have a touch of steel behind the mild-mannered exterior. Fundamentally I knew what the pressure would be like in China, and from necessity I transferred some of that pressure onto them.

By July we were as ready as we were ever going to be. The kids had designed a uniform: the male outfits were Mandarin-influenced, while the girls had dresses of which even the sartorially picky Chloe approved.

On paper I thought the design looked pretty cool. Jerry had masterminded it and we raised an absolutely astronomical amount of money to pay for these ninja suits to be made by a local seamstress. She happened to be one of the smallest people I’ve ever met and I still have a vivid image of her valiantly struggling with enough black, shiny material to kit out the terracotta army. Unfortunately the kids had picked a material that was so smooth and shiny that the stitches wouldn’t hold, so the poor woman was engaged in a Forth Bridge-style endeavour trying to keep the things together. I swear that I ended up with someone else’s jacket. We affectionately referred to the outfits as our pyjamas.

We flew out to China and arrived in Xiamen via Hong Kong. It was everyone’s first time there, me included. I got off the plane, so jet-lagged, so tired. I went into my hotel room, lay down on the bed and even then sobbed into my pillow, already feeling the pressure. It was a nightmare.

China is about as alien as it’s possible to get without leaving the planet. The signs are incomprehensible even when in English. The ‘Chinglish’ breakfast menu was a real treat: ‘Com of Cream Soup’, ‘Five Precious Ingredient Gruel’, ‘Its its juice’ and ‘Baked Frog’ delighted us all. I was thrilled to be welcomed at one venue by a sign declaring, ‘Classical comfortable pursuequatity enjoylife travelledevery where of senda specialty attitude enjoyment joviality’. I knew this was somewhere where the rules were different.

We only had one day to adjust before we found ourselves at the grand opening of the event. This was held in a conference centre that made the O2 arena look like a garden shed. It was absolutely enormous; a vast space with thousands of people and a procession of national flags. Every country in the world seemed to have a choir there. There were only two choirs from Great Britain, us and Farnham Youth Choir. When the Union Jack came out, something cataclysmic happened.

Here I was with all this group of kids from Northolt, many of whom were children of immigrant families (first, second and third generations) who I think had never identified that strongly with being British because of their other cultural links. Suddenly, out there in China, in an alien environment, they were being photographed and feted as representatives of Great Britain. They had a powerful sense of being British. When the Union Jack emerged they screamed as one at the top of their voices. I looked at them all yelling as loud as they could, and thought, ‘Oh, no, they’re going to wreck their voices for the competition’ – we were due to be performing at 8.45 the next morning. I screamed down the line, ‘Stop shouting!’ They took no notice and continued to blow their gaskets.

The next morning my lead tenor, Kodi Bramble, with whom I had had so many ups and downs, came up to me at breakfast to croak, ‘I can’t sing, I’ve got no voice.’ This was the day of the competition, so this was not good news, but I told him that he must at least come with us to sing. Who knows? His voice might have come back by then.

Grim-faced, we set out for the venue. As the air-conditioned bus shuddered to a halt, the soupy morning air of the Chinese monsoon season poured in through the open door. The time had arrived. Up sprang Rhonda to deliver her impromptu speech, worthy of Henry V. ‘We know our parts perfectly,’ she told the others. ‘We have gone from nothing to something really, really beautiful. Do it for England, Northolt, Gareth, our families, our friends. But most of all let’s do it for ourselves.’ The first of many tears that day threatened to break my equilibrium.

Rhonda’s pride was clear and she still recalls the performance with affection: ‘It was seeing how far we had come from a group of ultimately mismatched personalities, and we were united.’ But this was no time for sentiment. There was singing to be done.

Alas, the bravado she stirred in the choir was fragile. Not long afterwards we were standing backstage at the competition venue just about to go on to perform. The choir who were on before us gave this almighty bang with their feet on the floor and let rip a ‘hah!’ as if they were doing the Haka before singing something very red-blooded and exotic, not at all in the English choral tradition. The kids looked round in absolute horror. I could see them thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, what have we got ourselves into? We are hopelessly out of our depth.’

It hit me as well. Back at the beginning of the whole process when I had been asked whether I could create a choir good enough to compete in the World Choir Games I had brazenly said, ‘I can try. I don’t know exactly what that is going to mean or how far we can get, but I will give it my best shot.’ Now, just like the kids, when I heard the quality of the other choir I realised exactly what we had got ourselves into. It was a daunting moment for us all.

Jerry Cleary was the linchpin. He was one of the later influx of sixth-formers who had brought a new maturity to the sound (and the behaviour!) of the choir. Even the spirited Rhonda couldn’t bring them together in the face of this fearsome opposition. But she remembers everyone looking to Jerry at this critical moment. ‘He took on a very fatherly role, he was geeing people up and saying, “We can do this, it doesn’t matter, we’ll do it ourselves, we will do it our own way.”’

The now voiceless Kodi was an essential part of the difficult Fauré piece, ‘Cantique de Jean Racine’, so needless to say that particular song was not nearly as good as it had sounded in rehearsal, although he wasn’t alone in not being up to par. It is often the case with inexperienced singers that however powerful in emotional terms a final performance is, the moments where they really achieve their best are in rehearsal. Looking back, those are the moments that I cherish. Under the pressure of live performance the technical side can suffer in comparison.

So the competition performance in China was not our best: pressure, time, exhaustion, and a group of very inexperienced performers were all factors. But it was precisely because of all those circumstances that I felt inordinately proud of every single one of the Phoenix Choir. I had thrown them to the lions, I really had, and they had risen to the challenge and performed as well as they possibly could on the day.

Months later I watched the footage back and saw that, unbeknown to me, Jerry had also cried on that final evening. He said this beautiful thing: ‘If you have the bottle and the right sort of teacher, you can basically do anything.’ I have to report that upon watching it, I broke down in tears again.

Only then did I understand the value of the choir to the kids. Finally, they had realised that I, and everyone else, believed in them enough to say, ‘I reckon you could go and do this incredible thing. You might not succeed, you might not win a medal, but you can at least go there and say you did it. You deserve to be pushed as hard as possible and to be made to sing to the best of your ability.’ I had an opportunity to challenge them. That was a privilege.

It’s an experience that changed us all. Not only do many of them still listen to the ‘Cantique de Jean Racine’ on their iPods, they emerged taller and, I believe, richer as people. I’ve just put the Cantique on in my office and it’s the first time I’ve listened to it since 2006. I simply couldn’t face it until now. I had to stop typing to listen to it. What a stunning piece of music, and even now it transports me back to a wonderful, brave time in a shabby school hall in Middlesex where a group of secondary school kids overcame the odds and entirely failed to win a medal. I know that this piece is with them forever as it is with me. I hold the experience in my heart.

Having never been part of a television series before I wasn’t sure what to expect next. During the months when the editing was under way I had not seen very much, just the bit that is shown at the beginning of each programme where there is a very fast sequence of scenes. When I first watched one of those it was exactly like what they say happens when you drown: your life flashes before you. And every moment that flickered past actually triggered a whole other set of experiences and memories; click, click, click, an incredibly intense feeling of sensory overload.

When the final version of the series was ready I picked up the DVDs early one afternoon, raced home, sat down and watched the entire thing back to back on my own. All I was focused on was whether or not I looked like a complete and utter idiot. That was all I could think. Had I said anything that I was going to regret and were the classical music police going to come round with their sirens wailing, and grab me because I had made a stupid slip and said that Fauré was German rather than French?

What were other choirmasters and conductors going to think? I had just come out of the Royal Academy where the whole ethos is about working as hard as you can to do things to the highest possible level. So if I had made a bum note on national television, I would have felt really bad. There were a couple of tiny moments where I winced. I have learnt that in any series there will always be those few minor moments because over such a long period you simply can’t be perfect. And I have also learnt that the only people who really care are me and a couple of angry bloggers.

After watching the series through and deciding I did not, in fact, come across as a complete and utter idiot, I watched it back again with Becky. We went from thinking, ‘Well, we could tell our families about this,’ to, ‘We can probably tell our friends about this,’ to, ‘We can probably tell everyone we know,’ to at the end thinking, ‘This is great. Maybe people might like this.’

I had one other realisation. I had begun by thinking we were making a series with someone who works in music education – what we call in the trade an ‘animateur’ – but as I realised that no one would know what that meant I appeared as ‘a conductor’. Some of the newspapers actually said, ‘London Symphony Orchestra conductor’, which of course was completely untrue. I had worked with the LSO, but the orchestra had a highly regarded, internationally renowned conductor of its own in Sir Colin Davis. Consequently there were a few reactions and rants along the lines of, ‘Who is this man, who thinks he is the London Symphony Orchestra conductor? Upstart oik. Put him back in his place!’

The first programme of the series went out in December 2006 – a good five months after all the emotion of that final night in China. It was the weirdest week. Strangers started speaking to me in the street. I was getting emails and phone calls from people I hadn’t seen for years. The weekend before the series was shown I had gone on a stag weekend in Spain with a mate of mine called Marcus. While we were out there I had a call telling me that the series had been featured in the TV preview section of The Times, which felt very exciting.

I then raced back from the stag do on the Sunday to appear on BBC Breakfast the following morning. Even though I had been pacing myself during the festivities, I had not left the bar until four in the morning and rushed to the airport to catch a plane at seven. I was very bleary-eyed. I just about got through Sunday, and then I had to wake up early again the next morning to be on Breakfast to launch the show. The great thing about live TV is that they slapped enough make-up on me so that no one could tell quite how tired I was – I hope.

As I had wearily got on the plane that Sunday morning to come back from Spain, despite the woolly head, I did have a very clear sense that I might just have enjoyed my final moments of anonymity. I wasn’t complaining. I had decided to sign up for this: I would roll with the punches.