Stephen Deazley reflects on Love Music Community Choir’s extraordinary ten-year partnership with the Usher Hall in Edinburgh.
In 2023, Love Music Community Choir reached a significant milestone: our 10th year of singing together. In typical style, we made a year-long celebration of it, a carousel of collaborative musical adventuring with brass band, choirs, street bands, and a genre defying orchestra. Ambition and scale have forever been part of our DNA and we love to reach out to others who share our passion for inclusive, community-oriented music making.
Back in November 2012, it was this same notion of ambition and scale that fuelled a conversation with Karl Chapman, manager of Edinburgh’s iconic and acoustically fine concert venue, the Usher Hall. Originally built in 1914 with a donation of £100,000 from whisky distiller Andrew Usher – appropriate for a Scottish concert hall! – the hall was edging towards its own significant centenary in 2014, and had benefitted from restoration, renovation, the building of a new glass wing, and significant investment in its facilities and public spaces. The renovations brought with it new energies around the notion of public engagement, and, inevitably, questions about purpose: Who is this building for? Who can access it? Who is allowed?
LMCC, March 2013, credit Helen Wyllie
Ten years ago, we were debating the benefits and drawbacks of attaching the word, ’community’ to our new singing project at the Usher Hall. Mostly because – and this persists – the public perception of ‘community singing’ still carries with it the stigma of being ‘good enough for amateurs’ or ‘not rigorous’ enough in its programming, arranging, or delivery. We don’t believe that, and we never have. We argue for quality in community arts engagement because we believe everyone deserves it. Why not aspire for community access to the finest acoustic hall in the city, to work with the best musicians, to exceed expectations, to challenge the perceptions of the artistic value and ambition of community music making? Why not make this normal rather than exceptional?
This was our opening gambit to Karl Chapman, and it was fully met with an equally quick and impassioned response: “OK then, how soon can you start?”
Our choir was fully signed up less than two days after we advertised and eight weeks after our conversation with Karl, we held our first rehearsal. Our limit of 180 (what we thought we could manage) rocketed to 300 in the second term (what we could actually manage). Did we learn on the job? Yes, we certainly did. But then again, we are still learning, still questioning, reflecting, evolving. And the core of this enquiry revolves around two simple questions: Who are the most important people in the room? and What do they need?
LMCC, Nov 2015, credit Robert McFadzean
This lingering public perception of low quality in community singing sector is short-sighted and skewed by a lack of understanding of the values that are at play. Critiquing community music making using an assumed framework of musical excellence is unhelpful, in part because our work is rooted in other concerns: the positive social and cultural impact it offers; the health and happiness of our participants and collaborators; a careful and considerate approach to inclusion. Professional music making doesn’t invest in these outcomes as deeply as community-oriented practice does. But do we still strive for the highest musical output? Of course, we do. Is it the most important thing? No, it is not.
Philosophically when given a choice between inclusion and exclusion, we choose inclusion every time, and this brings a responsibility to meet individual needs as fully as we can, so that everyone’s experience is as rich and rewarding as it can be.
The first step to genuinely inclusive practice is to name and understand the different barriers to participation and often the most deeply felt is a lack of confidence and insecurity.
I can’t sing / I was told not to sing / My teacher said I couldn’t join the choir
These exclusions hurt and they can leave a scar. It is not easy to say yes to something if we carry embarrassment and shame. But people do say yes, they take risks, and therefore our job is to meet this risk with kindness as well as with an opportunity to learn, grow, offer new challenges and new musical adventures, nurture curiosity and creativity. Nothing beats that buzzy, fuzzy feeling of achieving and doing this in the company of others is even better.
Cries of ‘courage’ from the conductor’s podium, in a sometimes-passable French accent, are often heard. I like very much that the word ‘courage’ and ‘encourage’ sit so neatly together. Our choir has always taken creative risks, some would say we revel in it, but I believe there is inherent value in the collective effort of just ‘having a go’.
It was American musician, actor, and creative polymath Donald Glover aka Childish Gambino who said, “If it’s making you nervous, you’re doing it right”. Risk stimulates personal growth.
Selfie with beatboxer Hobbit & LMCC, Nov 2014
One clear change across our ten years has been the growing complexity of musical arrangements, not for their own sake, but because we have become collectively more able, and this growth has been organic. Our last concert would have been entirely unachievable in the first few years. We have developed our own distinct ecosystem of teaching style, programming, voice part arranging and performing that suits us, literally, it fits us well, because it has evolved over time. And of course, it should continue to do so, for when creative and cultural practices get stuck, everybody loses.
Each year has been different, each term has been unique and so the challenges are always new and exciting. Like walking a perpetual musical tightrope, it requires a clear focus, knowing which direction you are heading, constantly moving forward, and an understanding of the art of balance.
Our trademark style is colourful and eclectic, and there is a reason for it. It’s a deliberate strategy to dismantle, in a gentle way, the hierarchies that place varying degrees of value on music from different traditions. Good music is just good music.
So, with a spirit of playfulness, apologies to the letters Q, X, Y and Z, and all the unauthored folk and roots music we have sung from across the world, here is an inexhaustive skip through Love Music Community Choir’s musical alphabet.
LMCC with Dave Milligan Trio and Su-a Lee, Jun 2018, credit Andy Catlin
The Usher Hall has played host to many things in its life, music of course, but also political rallies, boxing matches, films, Eurovision, graduations, an air raid shelter in the second world war and more recently as a Covid testing centre. The periods of social isolation and restrictions in 2020 and 2021 were creatively tough and emotionally challenging. When previously all we had known was the easeful joy of gathering and singing, suddenly, this was the most dangerous thing we could do. It was banned.
While the Covid 19 pandemic drove a steam roller through our core work, the two questions remained. Who are the most important people in the room? and What do they need? The journey of the choir never stopped. We kept going. We learned new skills, teched ourselves up, worked out how to deliver online singing, developed new models of audio and video resources, but more importantly, found a way to keep our community connected and creatively engaged.
As a team, we managed to find solutions and, importantly, made new discoveries, primarily about notions of access and accessibility which is far more nuanced than we had ever considered. Our prime asset is the glorious physical space of the Usher Hall with its much-loved stage and revered acoustics, but what about people who cannot get there, today or in the future, what about those people? What about people who are in a different room? Can we make it work for them too?
LMCC at Usher Hall and live online, Nov 2023, credit Chris Scott
Our hybrid choir model is evolving, with an average of 60 people joining our 300 strong in-person choir, connecting with us online from other countries and from just round the corner. We’ve opened a digital door where we didn’t know one existed, and the simple act of singing together has become a busy tech zone and a broadcast room. It’s more work but we can’t avoid the issue of remote accessibility. Once you see it and can name it, it’s important to try, at least, to find solutions.
There was a whopping 947-day gap between our public concerts on either side of the pandemic, broken by an emotional concert to a busy hall in June 2022. We opened with a song written for the occasion, an anthem to the Usher Hall and to the return of singing within its walls.
We are here
Take us in
And we will sing
It was intended as an honouring of the Hall and of the opportunity afforded to us, as a charity, to make the most of it, to hold the doors open for others, to bring joy through our music making, to inspire, to laugh, to challenge and to comfort. Just don’t ask us to dance.
The last words that help to tell our ten-year story go to our singers. We asked for special moments, and there were too many to include, but here are just a few:
The Blondie flash mob, with the little sprinkling of rock and roll stardust seeing the tour bus round the corner and Chris Stein’s acknowledgement
The unforgettable Punks, Rebels & Radicals concert where we embraced our inner anarchists in the year Trump became President
The incredible Eugene Skeef, wonderful African rhythms, learning/performing Gaelic mouth music on the stage at Glasgow Green
The heavens opening when we literally sang the first notes of the first song at the Ross Bandstand at the Queen’s Baton Relay concert
Singing the beautiful poignant Mara Beboos at the Iranian Festival in the hushed gallery of the National Museum
Cycling away across the Meadows from my first ever rehearsal singing ‘Phone in a Pool’
The thrilling (terrifying) moment at the RSNO concert when the city organist played the first chord of Ode To Joy and the surprise of the audience when we stood up and started singing from the front stalls. Epic!
The continuity, the river of song and connection through ten years
The first time I heard Stephen say, “fill the hall” and we did, during rehearsal of The Faith… I still listen to the recording
Jillian’s courageous turn on her trumpet – and Stephen referring to her as “the orchestra”
The adrenaline rush of backing James at the Usher Hall!
The warmth and friendship of our community. I went to rehearsal the evening of my father’s funeral – I knew this is where I wanted to be – just quietly wrapped in loving music
The amazing mix of people with nothing much else than the singing as a common thread and yet we had such a strong sense of identity and belonging
Happy Birthday Love Music Community Choir!
May your joyful voices rise to meet the coming years.