the choir

I've mentioned before that I'm a Doctor Who fan.  I also have a DVR, which means I never watch commercials.  However, I usually skip through the commercials in 30-second chunks, allowing me to see moments of commercials here and there.

Well, while watching Doctor Who on DVR a short while back ("Fear Her"--a great episode!), I skipped through commercials only to land on a moment that said THE CHOIR.  "What's that?" I asked the t.v., and then did something I never do.  I rewound the DVR to see the commercial.  It was just a ten-second teaser with some line like "What's your dream?"  And I rolled my eyes and thought, "oh, great: another show about people getting told they can't sing."

Later in the episode, there was a "sneak preview" of The Choir, and it proved me absolutely wrong.  It seems that the real premise is a choral musician, Gareth Malone, who goes around to "unlikely" communities and starts choirs!  It shows him trying to recruit people, then being clever on the podium, then conducting performances.  Apparently the goal is to get to the World Choir Games in China, which he refers to as the choral Olympics.  I'm ambivalent about competing as performance, but I thought the rest of the premise seemed interesting enough to see how it works out.

So I intend to DVR it and check it out.  If there's anything there, I hope to write about it.

It starts in one month, July 7, on BBC America, which usually means that it has already started airing on BBC proper, and so this isn't exactly breaking news.  I'm behind my international colleagues and surely won't be the first the comment on it.  So be it.  In the meantime, here are some of the thoughts I'm having before we go into it.

Things I liked: On a personal note, I'm relieved to see Gareth is actually two years older than I am.  It's just a little disheartening to see guys like Dudamel who are even younger yet more successful.  Not that I'm ambitious, I just... you know... am susceptible to envy.  I also liked that he was encouraging everyone to sing, accepting anyone who wanted to be a part of it.  Also, he seems fearless in terms of engaging fully with his singers and the music, not self-conscious or overly concerned with appearing to be a good conductor over actually conducting well.

Things I'm worried about: I mentioned the competition thing.  There's also the question I have about the British training of conductors.  I've never been inside their system, so I can't comment on it with authority; but, I've had a little experience with a few conductors trained in England, particularly, which has been not good.  I'm a little worried about the Bristish perspective of what a conductor's job is, and afraid that it will frustrate me that he doesn't do what I think he should do.  But the clips they showed of him conducting looked okay, so we'll just have to wait and see.