We are a friendly bunch who meet together to sing,to sound good and to feel good. You don't need to read music as we learn mostly by ear. You will never have to sing alone (unless you want to) and you won't have to take an audition. In the choir we have all ages from teenagers to pensioners, and we sing songs from different countries and cultures in many different languages.
Where do you meet?
Claremont Methodist Church at Camden, Bath,
BA1 6EA For map click
here
When do you meet?
Tuesday 7:15pm to
9:15pm.
Do I have to pay?
£5.00 (£3.50 for concessions) per session. Though we encourage you to
commit to a half term and pay for half a term.
Who leads the choir?
Su Hart, a
professional singer who has been leading since the beginning. However, all
decisions are made by a committee of members and everyone is welcome to add
their input about what goes on in the choir.
What sort of songs do you sing?
Ancient to modern, African to Hebridean, Balkan to British and anything between
including pieces specially commissioned for us. While we meet in a church, we
are not a religious choir.
Click Here to Listen to the Choir
We have
performed in Bath, Bristol and London and do at least three performances a year. We also have our own choir celebrations: a christmas banquet, summer barbecue and singing walks.
Joining is very easy - just come along, join in, and see how you like it, first session is free. You are very welcome.
Our Constitution
Walcot Community Choir is multi-cultural in content and outlook. We aim to bring
people together to celebrate and participate by empowering individuals through
global voice. We welcome all from the community, regardless of age, creed, sex,
race or impairment. We believe that everyone has something to offer, and input
from individual members forms an integral part of our choir.
- to support and encourage individuals, building confidence through voice
- to raise the audience and our spirits through quality performance
- to build bridges within the wider community
- to promote education through performance
A Bit of History about the Choir
The choir was formed in April 2000 when the London Road Partnership in Bath
provided a grant to fund a local choir as part of its millennium
celebrations. The plan was for Su Hart to lead a community choir, open to
anyone and everyone regardless of ability or experience, for 6 weeks, and
then to perform at the London Road Carnival in July of that year.
This whole experience was such fun that the 40 or so people who took part
wanted the choir to continue even after performing at London Road Carnival,
and so The Walcot State Choir was formed.
Here are some of the things we've done since then:
- We sing at the opening of Bath Fringe Festival each year
- We've taken part in the musical finale of Bath Music Festival for several years
- We commissioned Kirsty Martin to write a song cycle for us, which we performed at the Rondo Theatre in April 2004.
- We raised some of the
money to pay for this through a sponsored triathlon
We've held several fund-raising concerts in Bath's Rondo Theatre and Walcot Village Hall - We've raised money for Amensty, WaterAid, Global Music Exchange (supporting the Baka people of Cameroon), Bath Community Playbus, Kara (an AIDS support organisation in Zambia), Dorothy House (a local hospice), the education of a girl in Uzbekistan, and ActionAid
- We travel to London each year to sing along with around 30 other
community choirs from across the country at Sing for Water, an annual
event to raise money for WaterAid at the Thames Festival
We have hosted a french and hungary choirs here in Bath and travelled both countries as part of a musical exchange (see Choir Exchange)
