★★★
Inter
Act
★★★
with
Manvinder Rattan
1
Emma:
Did you expect or plan to be a conductor?
Manvinder:
No, never! I wanted to be a menswear buyer but I never got to do that - and actually, I ended up doing something much better, which was conducting and leading singing and leading playing, which impacts on so many more people’s lives than just clothes! So I’m really glad that my career accidentally became that of a musical director.
It happened because I am the product of inspirational music teachers. I was lucky to have a sequence of such great teachers at primary and secondary school and then going on to Sing for Pleasure as a youngster (when I was doing a choral scholarship at college), learning how to conduct, and thinking nothing of it. But actually, that became something quite important because, later on, when I came into contact with the Music Society of John Lewis (which was in a little bit of a sorry state after many, many glory years of putting on annual obscure operas that were reviewed by the national press but had slightly lost its way), I thought “actually, I’m okay with amateur voices - I can help a bit”, so I did.
No-one realized at the time that this was going to grow in the way that it did. It grew massively - we went from one choir of 35 very mature people, who gave about 2 performances a year, eventually to 21 choirs, an orchestra, a rock band and a jazz band and we did 40 performances a year. At one point, rather than kill myself (!), they said “Well why don’t you make that your job, Manvinder?” and I said “OK, I’ll do that, shall I?!” and it worked rather well.
I had a great time and, when I left it last year, it was very much time to go and volunteer for other musical challenges, which I very much enjoy - it’s different and it’s adapting to music you don’t know as well - but fundamentally, it’s about inspiring people to make music together.
Emma:
That’s such a worthy thing. Don’t you think also, when you end up doing something that you think either will be short-term, or it’s not necessarily the main deal, you go at it with greater freshness because you are always thinking “Well, I’m not sure this is what I was going to do” and, as that goes on and on, it just grows and grows and you want to do more and more exciting things.
Manvinder:
Yes, very much so. That freshness...well, you’ve hit the nail on the head.
I remember in my very early days with the John Lewis Chamber Choir, we found that there were some quite talented singers lurking around in the business and they heard about it and they all came together; we formed a small chamber choir and we went off to do a concert somewhere. It was an amazing event - I have to say they did sing very, very well, with some quite challenging repertoire, right from the 16th. through to the 20th. century (we hadn’t hit the 21st. century by that point). Then I remember one of them saying “Could you do that concert again at our parish church?” and they all said “Let’s go, we enjoyed that, we’re going to do it again”. That, for a moment, was very, very important actually because it was an utter freshness of approach and utter sense of yes, can do; yes, we are happy to explore new things, new ideas because we’re having such fun making music together.
The travelling aspects were also particularly important. We travelled every year and it built a community of musicians inside the business - which provided a very powerful network actually; there was pretty well no bit of the business that we couldn’t pick up the phone into, to discuss, alleviate, facilitate, ease through, etc..
Emma:
That’s very important and a very interesting by-product, isn’t it?
Manvinder:
Yes, using networks is important. Fun is even more so!
Emma:
And so, well, the menswear could be like a retirement career?
Manvinder:
Yes, it could be! I think I might be a bit of an old fogey on that count, now...
Emma:
I don’t think so!
2
Emma:
Now you did mention to me a story about your dad coming to one of your concerts and being very proud, which is lovely. Are your family members, past or present, musical - is there any music anywhere? I know your daughters are musical.
Manvinder:
My daughters are but no-one else is, really, so...it’s just not a thing, why isn’t it a thing?!! Clearly, my daughters have completely had me in their lives - and a very supportive mother - all three of us are phenomenally lucky that my wife Malvinder is no longer a practising musician. In order to see her husband a little bit more (!) when we got married, she started singing in the choir on a Tuesday night. Actually, she has a very sweet singing voice and she was able to give support to the rest of us, to make sure we were all in the right place at the right time, for rehearsals, for lessons, etc., you know what it’s like, bringing kids up. Otherwise, that’s it - it’s my girls and that’s it - clearly the influence hasn’t gone any further than that! That’s okay, everyone has to make their own choices. No-one above.
Fundamentally, the economic background is that we are a family of immigrants - I was born in Africa, in Nairobi, and we moved here when I was about two years old. When you do that, you do it with an economic imperative - the economic imperative is to have stable and well-paid income, to make sure that you’ve moved to the right country for the right reasons, which usually does not include music-making. Find me a rich musician and I’ll point you at only a few! So I think the priority was very much that you really ought to go off and do medicine or law, media, finance or something like that and then, accidentally, I became a musician - and I have to say my family is slightly envious of the quality of life I have but not envious of the salary I earned!
Emma:
That’s always the payback, though, and I say it to friends very often. You take that on the chin when you do it because you know that that side of things won’t be comparable with most friends in other professions. However, the rewards so outweigh it, I think, and the quality of life in terms of wholeness and oneness and fulfilment are just that should be there, so if that’s there that’s great really isn’t it?
Manvinder:
Completely. The transformational nature of music-making, particularly music-making with other human beings, is inestimable - it’s just fantastic, it really is and that counts for a lot. I know I’ve made a big difference to the lives of many people, along my time.
Emma:
That’s all you want to know isn’t it?
Manvinder:
Yes.
3
Emma:
Do you have any favourite early performing memories? You told me of a solo performance of something, I think, when you were about 9; is there anything else that’s choral, that sticks in your mind?
Manvinder:
Very much so. I remember at the age of 11, sitting having my lunch and my form teacher, who was also the Head of Music at the school, walking in and frogmarching me into a rehearsal of Haydn’s ‘Creation’; so there I was, at the age of 11, happily singing the ‘Creation’. He was a brilliant musician and it was absolutely glorious. I’d hum it to myself on the way home; I didn’t really care if no-one could hear me, thankfully.
Curiously, the year after, we did the Vivaldi ‘Gloria’, with about 80 boys of the school. It was a boys’ school, a state school - and I think about 80 of us on the stage, singing the Vivaldi ‘Gloria’ to our hearts’ content - great fun. I sang alto for the one and only time (my voice began to change at the age of around 12 or 13) and then, our Music Service in Redbridge used to hold (still does) biennial choral festivals at the Royal Albert Hall. Now for a kid performing in that space is really very special. I did three of those as a singer and, in my final year at school, I was in the Youth Symphony Orchestra for the borough, playing horn. It was really exciting - a very, very exciting moment.
Emma:
Those moments do stay in your mind.
Manvinder:
Very much so, very much so indeed. They were all very vivid...so those early memories of singing, playing Haydn and things like that and designing concerts at school with the Head of Music, who’d say “What shall we do this year?” He would sit back and smile at us and let us get on with it.
Emma:
I’m noticing that you said “80-strong boys’ choir”, so is it probably worth just slipping in, here, the rôle model aspect of males singing - and older males, from the point you’re at - so that kids can think “They’ve gone on and done it and it’s fine to stay doing it?" I think, for a lot of kids, that is important.
Manvinder:
Yes, completely. Here’s an odd little story - the current chair of the National Youth Choirs is a gentleman called David Roper. Now David and I went to the same school together - he was in the lower sixth form and I was in year 1. He was very, very tall at that time (although he is quite tall now!), so there I was, looking up at him. He was one of those hero musicians - he was a stunning tenor, he was the tenor soloist for Haydn’s ‘Creation’ and he went on to get a Choral Exhibition, I think, somewhere at Cambridge. He was a really good violinist as well and he led the orchestra. (He didn’t do the tenor solos and lead the orchestra at the same time!) We bump into each other again quite regularly now because we’re part of the organization, we work together on a number of projects and seeing people like him - and loads of others like him - making music, you’d never think that music wasn’t a cool thing to do. It didn’t occur to you that anyone would think that music wasn’t a cool thing to do - and in fact, even amongst our peers in the music department, there were a lot of sportsmen, a lot of cricketers, a lot of footballers and they just happily did both. It wasn’t a particularly posh school; there was a fair bit of middling deprivation around because it was a selective grammar school. So the boys there did not necessarily come from very privileged backgrounds at all; they just happened to be quite bright.
Emma:
Brilliant. So that’s the best way then, so the motivation is all right. The wanting to do things is what you want people to feel, isn’t it - and chorally, that’s always good, really.
4
Emma:
My next question probably is slightly loaded, in a good way. Choral singing offers countless benefits and life joys - well you’ve already said that, in several ways. How does your rôle as CEO of Voices Foundation promote and expand choral activity and all the advantages of ensemble singing? I’m thinking here really about children in the sorts of schools you’re saying, or even schools where there is virtually nothing. In my early teaching, I went to a couple of schools that had had a desert, in terms of voice use - and it was exciting but really quite alien for them to come across things like that, on offer to them. So what can Voices Foundation do for people, if people aren’t familiar with it and don’t know?
Manvinder:
First, get in touch with us and we’ll talk to you about what we can do because the transformational effect of that on children is just off the scale. We know that it markedly impacts children’s well-being. We are particularly targeting children from underprivileged backgrounds, in schools where there is much higher percentage of children on free school meals and much greater diversity than the averages around the country. We know that those children are much happier when they are singing and, if they are happier when they are singing, then they are more likely to apply themselves and be attentive, when it comes to their school life in its entirety. If they do that, they’re more likely to get more out of their time at school.
I had a story come back from one of our practitioners in the north of England - she said that there were four schools all on this one bus, going to a maths festival or something, and from the school at which she taught (whichever school that was), she said that the kids were at the back, singing all the way there and all the way back. They were just so happy about life - and the other schools just looked at them and were now thinking “Crikey, they’re so happy”. I’m immensely proud of those kids for just bursting into song, without any prompting from teachers - because that’s what they know.
It’s funny isn’t it, if the kids don’t have it, then they have a sense of awe of others that do have it. I just wish that every single child in this country had access to really good singing leadership in their schools, which is exactly what Voices Foundation does. It enables all teachers (because there is virtually nothing in the PGCE courses anymore, so we make up that shortfall), to be able to lead simple singing in their schools, to create singing schools and, through singing schools, to have happy children, who are happy to be at school and therefore make the most opportunity that school gives them.
Emma:
Fantastic! I think that should sell it to everyone on the planet to be honest, that’s wonderful.
Manvinder:
I hope so. I’ll do all the UK in the first instance and the planet will just have to wait for a while!
5
Emma:
Thinking a little bit as well about the people who are delivering...my experience was different because we’ve always had music, so it didn’t seem an alien thing for me to be doing it and offering it to people. However, I’m quite aware, from what you said of your experience, that if you are in a family or an extended group that hasn’t got singing, or voice, or choral things as a norm, then it’s probably quite a leap of faith. So I was thinking, really, if someone hasn’t got much experience of choral activity, or working chorally, but wants to find out more, what suggestions might you have for them?
Manvinder:
This is a slightly lateral story but one of the things I very much enjoyed, when working at John Lewis, was being invited to lead directors’ or departmental team days. They wouldn’t be allowed to know that I was coming because if they did, they probably wouldn’t turn up! I’d introduce myself and then I’d say “I’m going to share something with you but I’d like you not to share your reaction with your neighbour. Don’t say anything, write it down, you’ve a post-it note in front of you. In 40 minutes, we’re going to be singing together, as a choir, in six-part harmony”. And the reactions were always the same: “Don’t be ridiculous”, “It can’t be done”, “Scared”, “I don’t sing”, “Get me out of here”, etc.. A couple would be curious and then there would some profanities, which I can’t repeat here!
We’d then do it. The skills that I’d use were exactly the skills I’d learned at Sing for Pleasure, actually: the ability to walk in and take them from absolutely nothing to absolutely something. We’d open out their voices by various methods and suddenly there would be laughter, suddenly there would be jigging about, there’d be much enjoyment and suddenly, by accident, without them even realizing that they were doing it, there they were, singing in six-part harmony. At the end, I’d say “Try to describe to me what you’re feeling now” and then there was usually a mixture of “Elation”, “My goodness, I didn’t realize I could do that”, “It was just amazing”.
I’d always close by saying “Great, you’ve just sung, as a choir, in six-part harmony and pretty much all of you were convinced you couldn’t! Now, what I want you to think about is what does that say to you about anything else in your personal and professional life that, with the right training, you might be able to achieve?” - and also “Please come and join a choir.”
So there are two things I’d certainly do. If you’ve grown up with no singing in your life and you’d like to sing, then there are loads of great community choirs around and it’s worth getting in touch with one of those. And if you’re involved in education, please come and talk to us at Voices Foundation. We are very keen to help you if you are in a MAT, or a hub, or a school - any provider of singing - please come and talk to us; we have various pathways through our work in order to enable you to do that. If you’re interested in community choir singing and adult work, then do have a look at the singing training programmes; also singing events, particularly at summer school, which is an annual gathering of the clans; and also training - a lot of the training we do there, is of choral conductors - we take people from absolute entry-level, right the way through to many of our graduates going on to postgraduate courses in conservatoires in the UK and doctoral courses in America.
Emma:
Wonderful - so there’s access for anyone.
Manvinder:
Yes there’s a lot of opportunity there, if you’re happy to take it.
Emma:
Brilliant - that’s so helpful. Thank you.
6
Emma:
Right, a sidestep question: what you do in your rare free moments?
Manvinder:
I love reading! Historical detective fiction, usually - it’s terribly tedious but makes my journeys into work go more smoothly!
We do enjoy gardening. My wife and I have a lovely garden and we’ve now got it to a point of relatively low maintenance, so it doesn’t take much work to keep it looking good. We do enjoy entertaining, so we’ve been known to have parties of up to 70 in our back garden, in the summer months and that’s really nice.
I’m a scrabble freak. I just play it with my little computer because no-one will play it with me!
So those are the sorts of things I tend to do. I now sing a lot more than I used to. I sing with a vocal octet in central London on a Tuesday afternoon and I sometimes also sing at Chingford Parish Church, which has a remarkable choir of about 70-strong, so they don’t really need me - well they do sometimes because they’re short of tenors - who isn’t short of tenors?! But it also reminds me of my time as a lay clerk, many years ago as a choral scholar, so it’s nice to be able to go and do some singing there too.
7
Emma:
How would you compare choral culture in the UK with that in other parts of the world? That can be on any level and in any way you want to take it, really.
Manvinder:
I have various bits of experience but I wouldn’t say that my experience is particularly empirical. I have very little contact with the choral culture of Scandinavia, for example, whereas I know that many of my colleagues know much more than I do and are able to tell us “Wow, we’d learn a lot from the Scandinavians.” I’m sure we could.
There are three possible areas where I have had more in-depth experience. Firstly, teaching in India, which was fascinating. I was teaching a load of teachers how to conduct choirs and fundamentally realizing that India doesn’t have a choral tradition - because singing together as a choir isn’t really an Indian thing, it’s a western construct. When it happens in India, it happens because it is a western construct being made over there. I remember doing a masterclass at the University of Goa, which is a former Portuguese and predominantly Christian area, so that’s why they have choirs; I was teaching up in the north-east...there’s a very strong Christian element up there.
I also taught in Nairobi (I was there for two weeks), which was a different kettle of fish because one of my students said to me “Manvinder, are you free tonight? Will you come and watch me rehearse my choir?” So I did and he conducted the Roman Catholic Chaplaincy Choir, just near the presidential palace. You’d normally expect a church choir in this country to be 20- or 30-strong, if you’re lucky - well there were 120 of them (!) and they were working their way through the ‘Messiah’ for a concert, in addition to mass, that Sunday morning. He then took me down to the chapel and I asked “How many do you get here?”; he said “With the main chapel and tents all the way round, we normally get 1,000 for mass, every Sunday morning here”. It suddenly clicked to me: on a Sunday, if you weren’t a Sikh, or a Muslim, or Hindu for example, then actually, you all pile into church and you sing like crazy. There was some wonderful indigenous music. Were they as sophisticated readers as they are here? - possibly not - but they jolly well tried very hard, so I was quite impressed with that.
In 2023, I think I’m supposed to be conducting the ‘Messiah’ in Nairobi, so that’s a quick plug; if anyone wants to go, play with wildlife and sing the ‘Messiah’ with Manvinder in Naivasha and Nairobi and then play with the baby elephants as well, come and have some fun!
Other areas where I’ve had some experience? Here’s an interesting one - well I hope none of my French colleagues are listening to this! So at Sing for Pleasure, we’re part of a francophone international association called ‘À Coeur Joie’. It’s where our roots lie, so I have a fair bit of contact with my opposite numbers in France, Belgium, Switzerland and francophone Africa and Québec in Canada. I’ve seen the French National Youth Choir perform on a number of occasions - they’re about 35-strong - well the National Youth Choir of Great Britain has about 150...
Emma:
...I was in it!...
Manvinder:
...well there are five of them - the main one, the boys’ choir, the girls’ choir, the training choir and the chamber choir - so you’re talking several hundreds of kids and people who compete to get places, whereas the National Youth Choir of France is 35-strong and they have struggled to recruit. That gives me a fairly eloquent statistical analysis of the state of things in our country. We actually have some amazing things going on in the UK; we just don’t have it covering every child. For me, that’s really important - that every child has a crack at it - particularly in terms of increasing the diversity of backgrounds, of where these kids come from, to ensure that our singing activity accurately reflects the demographic of the country, not just one sector of it.
Emma:
Yes that’s really interesting.
8
Emma:
That leads into the next question: do you think choral activity is represented sufficiently accurately, or well, even, or often enough, in the broadcast media?
Manvinder:
No.
Emma:
You get the odd college in Oxford or Cambridge that you see from time to time, or you get a service at Christmas but there’s not masses generally about how choirs are, I don’t feel - but you may feel differently?
Manvinder:
I think that it’s not. I mean 2.1 million people sing on a weekly basis in this country, which is a lot more than those who turn up to football matches. Yet football matches and football players get the most extraordinary level of idolizing and the amount of money that goes into football is astronomical, whereas singing can actually cost very little. Everyone’s got a voice, yet the coverage of it is piecemeal.
I’ve been gently campaigning for a while for the restoration of the ‘BBC Choir Of The Year’ competition and, quite frankly, it is a bit of a tragedy that that focal point for singers, that pyramid, that bit of extra for everyone to aspire to, is no longer in place - but the money is just not there to make it happen.
Emma:
But it might be, you know; you have to keep banging the drum, don’t you? You never know...
Manvinder:
You have to keep banging that drum. So I keep banging that drum! I learned a lot from judging it, quite frankly, on the few occasions when I was part of the panel. It was really quite an eye-opener - certainly to see some really fantastic performances - but also to see some of the performances that went adrift, that actually could have been very different, could have been much better but sadly weren’t. Once, judging with Mary King...
Emma:
...oh yes, Mary’s great...
Manvinder:
...an inspirational lady, she says it how it is. We were disappointed; I remember there being a lot of young choirs presenting programmes that included quite a lot of pop repertoire because they thought it was cool. Well it might be cool but was certainly not good for the kids’ voices; kids aren’t necessarily physically developed enough the age of 9, 10, 11 to be able to sing those long phrases that, say, Adele can do. So if you try to get kids to sing it, they don’t have that ability to sustain, therefore breaking the sense of line. On another occasion, one children’s choir conductor had arranged the ‘Rhythm Of Life’ for a junior school choir and Mary went spare! She said “How appropriate do you believe that is for the children to be singing about rhythm in your bedroom and rhythm in the street?”
Emma:
But people don’t look at their lyrics. I suppose if they are a non-specialist and they’ve been roped in to do the choir because they want one there and they haven’t got anyone else to do it, that’s the kind of thing that goes down the priority list, to check what the actual words might be saying - and, of course, that’s often the case.
Manvinder:
Yes. For me, choral directing, text, text, text is everything. Everything you do is based on what does it actually mean - and if doesn’t mean anything, it’s extremely unlikely that I think you should sing it. For me, the whole thing about performing music is that combination of understandable text and music, the music that brings the text to life - something that people like Bach were so fantastic at. I’m sounding like an old fuddy-duddy! But Bach does that, there are moments when it leaves me utterly speechless.
Emma:
It’s very helpful for solo singers too, especially when they have to do language work. The concept of just singing something and making a noise and not really knowing what the words mean is carried on in the same way. So it’s important, I really think it is important, I agree.
Manvinder:
So yes. I think that, going back to your original question, I’d just like people to be thoughtful about what they sing and how they sing it, so that it can really make that impact, a long-lasting impact on the lives of those affected.
9
Emma:
What music moves you most?
Manvinder:
There is someone from every single period that really, really moves me.
I’m someone who is deeply rooted in the music of the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical periods, so for me the likes of Byrd, Tallis, Victoria, Palestrina, Gesualdo and Monteverdi particularly are deeply meaningful. I absolutely adore the Baroque period: Handel, particularly Bach and Vivaldi but also people like Zelenka are crazy crazy highly on my list. You know I grew up with Haydn. ‘Papa’ Haydn almost felt like a grand uncle in your room who you’d love to have dinner with because, from his music, you could just say “This guy is fun, he’s good to be with because he understands me as a human and he understands my desire to make music with his music.” And when I sing those masses and I play those symphonies, it’s absolutely fabulous. Beethoven... right through the 19th. Century...who doesn’t love Mendelssohn? I adore Bruckner and one ambition is to conduct all of his symphonies - it won’t happen but I can dream! And the French impressionists, I just adore the works of Debussy and Ravel; if I’m working, quite often I’ll just put on something, piano or anything by Debussy and Ravel. And into the 20th. century, I’m a big fan of Poulenc and Britten, Stravinsky, Elgar clearly a fair bit, Vaughan Williams most of the time - but not always! And right into the 21st. century, there are some incredible composers around; we are very lucky to have some really talented people who are writing for us today.
I’ll tell you a small story about that. Bob Chilcott wrote a major work for us in 2014, to celebrate John Lewis’s 150th. Anniversary. It was ‘Wenceslas’, which in fact I’m doing this current term with Hertford Choral Society. I remember just before the performance, Bob and his wife sitting with me, having a cup of tea, in my dressing room at the Royal Albert Hall. There were 450 in the choir and about 120 in the orchestra - it was quite a big gig...and that interaction, with people who will actually be known hundreds of years ahead of us, is memorable.
Also, I remember talking to the father of one of my friends who’d worked at John Lewis back in the 40s and 50s, maybe 60s, and Vaughan Williams coming along to a performance of ‘Sir John In Love’; I remember Desmond saying to me “Well the music wasn’t for me but he was ever so lovely - he’d come round and give us a big hug and say how well we were doing.” - that connection with someone whom we now lionize and make a hero out of; we look up to Vaughan Williams, some of the stuff that he wrote really does for us. So those composers who are making an impact on us now will be around in people’s musical heritage, hopefully for hundreds of years to come.
Also, I am a freak for keeping music apart - I don’t like fusion music, I’m afraid. I love listening to classical music, I love listening to raags and khyals and thumris etc. but I like them staying firmly apart.
Emma:
That’s interesting. I had a spate of learning kathak; my kathak teacher is a wonderful singer as well and she sings with various assorted players of Indian instruments. There was an element of mixing things and I think it can work, I think not always, so I’m with you in that; I think you need to hear what things are, before you put them together. It’s a lovely, lovely culture to draw music from and wind around, it’s very exciting.
Manvinder:
Love it to bits.
10
Emma:
Do you agree that team skills learned through choirs, orchestras and dramatic companies equal the skills gained from being in a sports team?
Manvinder:
Completely, if not more. It instills the confidence of working as a team, of presentation, of communication, of human interaction; all of those completely build, by singing in a choir. Now sport is great - in fact sports are vital - and I just hope that sports teaching now is a darn sight better than it was when I was at school, where actually, there were some behaviours in our sports department that were designed actively to put off many boys from taking any part at all in sporting activity - it ends up in long-term health conditions. So yes, absolutely, making music with other human beings is really, really vital to all of those things.
Oddly enough, I remember we used to have a concert management internship scheme at John Lewis - I’d have postgraduate students from many of the conservatoires come to me for a term, to learn about managing concerts and how to use project management skills, like Gantt charts, identifying critical paths and so on - concerts are major projects, frankly, and the one or two who really struggled were pianists; they didn’t really get teamwork because they very often just sat and played on their own. It was much harder work, working with a pianist, unless they actively played with other people. Many of them didn’t - many of them were quite solitary and sat quite happily, playing by themselves.
Emma:
Interesting, yes that’s really interesting.
11
Emma:
What else can be done to reinforce ensemble singing, that ensemble singing is for anyone? We have touched on that with the things that you’re involved with. What ways are there of making it feel accessible to anyone? Perhaps put more of it on TV, talk about it more and invite people to things more?
Manvinder:
Talk about it more, celebrate success more, show it off more; we do see major occasions in this country that are manned and powered by really high quality singing. For example, in recent events, the passing of our late Queen; everything around that event showed the apogee of what can be achieved in this country, which is phenomenally high. However, I’d just love more exposure of everything else that contributes to that, right, left and centre. It’s a strange one! We just don’t seem to want to make heroes out of our singers like we want to make heroes out of people who kick a football on a pitch!
Emma:
I agree and I don’t understand it; maybe it’s a mission we can push a bit harder, I don’t know.
12
Emma:
You said earlier that adjudicating on TV shows can be very revealing sometimes. Would you say it’s a fun process or hard work?
Manvinder:
It’s both. It is fun but like anything that’s fun, it can also be hard work. I remember one distinct bit of filming that we didn’t finish until four o’clock one morning - because we couldn’t go home until we got it right and people would keep getting it wrong! We had to keep looking for continuity jumps. It was great fun and, fundamentally, we stuck to the fun - again, the transformational nature of music-making for the people we were judging - but also remaining true to myself. I remember a very noted choral conductor coming to me a few weeks after that programme was broadcast a while ago and saying “You were the one who stayed true to your principles.”
I wasn’t being dogmatic but I was actually being a bit honest in my own mind about what it is I was looking for and what it is that is more important for me. For example, yes, the entertainment value of any concert is really important but fundamentally, I’m after good singing - good singing of the right notes, at the right time, in tune - with that sense that this choir is enjoying themselves. Now, if the choir is jigging around the stage like crazy and actually not sounding very nice, the jigging around the stage like crazy does not trump not sounding well! Actually, the sounding good is the bit that will get you through, whereas the jigging about the stage might not get you through. Having said that, choreography, when well done, is really very entertaining and fantastic; however, it cannot take priority over the quality of singing. I’m true to those sorts of principles.
Emma:
That’s very interesting. I’m hoping we’ve covered everything you’d like to say.
Manvinder:
Yes, brillant - thank you very much. It’s always fun to talk.
Emma:
It’s been great to catch up.
Manvinder:
Lovely to talk to you. Thanks Emma - bye now.
I am so thrilled that I can share this interview right now. Thank you, so very much, to Manvinder for waving the choral flag and power to the elbows of the millions of singers who elevate this country with an activity which carries nothing but good with it.
You may find the following links useful:
Sing for Pleasure
Voices Foundation
25th. January, 2023