Choir: Gareth Malone

Ludo spoke a little bit about Kate’s presenting career, and what he had observed about her experience of that. ‘Gareth,’ he told me, ‘I want you just to do your job, and for me to be there filming everything. When it goes well, I want to be right there knowing straight afterwards that it went well. Equally when it is bad, I want to see you pissed off at the end of the day and irritated. I want you to tell me that and believe that I will edit it fairly. Sometimes you might go too far, you’ll say something because you are emotional and tired, but you’ve got to trust me. It will be fair and balanced.’

His argument was that everyone lets off steam: you come home from a bad day at work and badmouth your boss to your wife, husband or whoever is around, and then you have a glass of wine and a sit-down and everything’s OK again. It’s part of the process of getting it out of your system. That was exactly what Ludo wanted. Ludo has a winning charm and I began to believe that it would be all right.

For a programme about music this was something of a leap of faith, because up until then in most documentaries about the arts that I had seen, everyone was on their best behaviour: ‘Well, when I worked with Sir so-and-so we got on very well, lovely chap, etc.’ You didn’t tend to see the rawness of the preparation and the ups and downs of the journey to get there. This was a chance to show the reality of struggling through difficulties to reach the final performance.

Perhaps because I had watched Brat Camp, I had seen how engagingly human that emotionally frank style of TV could turn out to be, and that it was important to have those peaks and troughs. The chat with Ludo had a big influence on me: it set me up for the way I approached the making of The Choir, which has been very, dare I say, organic, very much about following me setting up each of the choirs, on the good days and the bad: I am doing my job, making the decisions, dealing with the challenges, all under constant scrutiny. It’s been seven years now, so I have learnt to adjust to the pressure, but back in 2005 it was a very different story.

I was apprehensive about handing my life over to that degree. What made me feel a little more comfortable was that I was not handing my personal life over. This wasn’t going to be like The Osbournes. But I was handing my professional life over. And I didn’t even feel like it was the part of my professional life at which I was best. At the time I felt I was just getting good at singing. I was having lessons at a high level. That side of my life was going well, so what on earth was I doing trying to tackle a bunch of teenage kids and persuade them to start singing for me? I didn’t even consider myself to be a conductor.

One plus point was that I wasn’t living too far away from Northolt. Becky and I were renting a flat just off West End Lane in West Hampstead. During the series Ludo used an exterior shot of the outside of the building, which was a typical London town house. The building had four floors, was semi-detached and looked as though Gwyneth Paltrow or Nigella Lawson might live inside it.

In reality, the space had been carved up into small flats. We were living in two tiny rooms with the kitchen squeezed into one corner. We had all of our stuff crammed in. My office, the dining room, the living room, the kitchen and my rehearsal room were basically all the same space. On television it appeared as if we owned the whole house and people assumed I was this highfalutin choral director, which was a very long way from the truth. Every week I would catch the bus to Northolt. Heady days.

On that first day at Northolt High School what became clear to me was that music was not at the heart of the school’s activities. It was a foundation school that specialised in technology: indeed, I was given a tour round the brand-new information technology block. We weren’t actually going to be filming in there, but I could see that the head teacher, Chris Modi, was really proud of the new building. So we dutifully walked round, admiring the advanced network capabilities and smelling the new paint. I had a feeling at the time that this might not make it into the final documentary.

What I really wanted to know was what musical opportunities there were within the school. Because of the strong focus on technology, music just wasn’t a central part of the school ethos at the time. As Chris Modi himself put it, this was ‘fertile but unploughed ground’. This is not uncommon in schools where the head teacher is not particularly interested in music. It’s not that they are failing in their obligations to teach music, but there is a sense that they aren’t going the extra mile.

Against this background I needed to find some secret element of alchemy that would allow me to locate undiscovered talent and convert that, in an environment where singing was not really on the agenda, into a choir the whole school could support and be proud of. No mean feat. Without a large existing pool of singers to draw on there was nothing for it: I needed to get stuck into the auditioning process.

From early on, staff at the school had issues with the whole idea of auditioning: they hated the fact that we were going to be auditioning children on TV. They were terribly worried about it turning into something like The X Factor, and that we would humiliate the kids who weren’t good at singing. It was a fair concern. That was absolutely not what I wanted to do, but I did have to select the singers who would have the aptitude and commitment for this huge task. Creating a choir that could be selected for the World Choir Games in China was going to be a serious business. And besides, there were only 25 places on the plane.

Bournemouth School, where I was educated, was a selective grammar school. Everyone who was there had won a place by passing an exam. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the system, it had got me used to the idea of selection. Being auditioned seemed a perfectly normal thing to me: I’d been going to auditions since I was ten. I’d learnt early on that sometimes you didn’t get the part, that there was always the possibility of being rejected. At school I had missed out on being Romeo in Romeo and Juliet – a boy in the year below me got it. OK, that still rankles. But in general the idea of rejection was fine for me because I’ve got the resilience to bounce back and try again.

My school also had an atmosphere where achievement was really valued by the students and striving was cool. If you had the best result in the test, you got respect for it. You wanted to do well. I wanted to achieve. My school had both offered possibilities and fostered ambition: they encouraged you to go off and start your own projects and do whatever you wanted. It gave me a level of self-belief that has stayed with me ever since.

From many of the kids who auditioned I detected much less overt ambition. Like most teenagers they were content with the styles of music they knew and certainly would have seen little personal benefit in attempting to tackle the choral classics. Choral singing was not exactly the prevailing musical interest at Northolt High School when I turned up in 2005. Choir was not cool.

An audition process for me seemed the only way to tell who was serious and who just fancied being on TV. About 160 kids turned up. Something about the chance to go to China and to be on television caught their imagination and for some it kick-started a determination to succeed. Aiming high is so important in life. Why aim for the middle? I wanted to show these kids that you could do something truly adventurous.

Rhonda Pownall was one of the singers whose voice I liked a lot. She says that she was shocked by some of the kids who turned up to the auditions. She had thought it would be ‘the same faces who did singing. Asking people at high school to go and sing in front of a camera that was going to be broadcast nationwide was like asking them to perform star jumps in their vests in assembly.’

The auditioning took two full, very long days, with me sitting at the upright piano and the kids walking in one after another. I didn’t have long to assess their singing, but over the years I have become quite good at recognising who has potential. I usually know about three notes in. So I asked each of them to sing me a song, cold and unaccompanied, which told me masses. If they were singing something where I could discern a tune, even if was a song I didn’t know, that was always a very good sign.

Sometimes, however, it was hard to tell. A lot of the kids sang their own version of R&B songs with what appeared to be no discernable note, merely a collection of groans and squeaks. My brain was genuinely struggling to recognise the contours of what they were singing. If I couldn’t recognise a tune I’d say, ‘Right, sing me “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star”,’ because pretty much everyone in every culture knows that song. It’s also a good tune for testing singers: there’s a tricky interval, a fifth, in the melody, and if somebody couldn’t manage that, then I knew that they would struggle in the choir.

I had my bellyful of Mariah Carey-style R&B singing. That style of singing uses a tone that I have worked hard to avoid both in my own singing and when working with young people. I feel it is all too often the facsimile of emotion, a sham, effectively saying, ‘Listen to me, everybody, look how emotional I’m feeling.’ Ghastly. From a vocal point of view the auditionees were using their noses as a kind of resonator and had a collection of vocal tics and burps that were carried off with considerably more panache by Whitney Houston (RIP). This style works for Mariah Carey because when it comes to the big notes, she can deliver; there is muscular support there, there’s an actual sound. But when it is adopted by 13- and 14-year olds, it can sound like foxes mating.

I followed that up with an ear test, playing them a few notes for them to sing back to me. This instantly sorted the wheat from the chaff. Unsurprisingly, some of the students found this to be impossible. I managed to contain my exasperation as many of them valiantly, but ultimately unsuccessfully, tackled some tricky intervals. I gave each of them a score out of ten, and if they were below a seven, there was no way I could have them in the choir. Full stop. It came down to ability.

Sometimes it was a small difference, a dab of performance skill, that helped. Rhonda did a little dance while she sang ‘Tainted Love’ and that made her stand out for me when I was looking back through the 160 faces as ‘the girl who did the dance’. She remembers the audition as nerve-wracking. ‘I was terrified. I was shaking. You were laughing a bit, you did the note test, and then I went outside and had a quick panic attack.’

When I came out of the auditions I was worried about the boys, many of whom were struggling with the trauma of their voices changing (I much prefer ‘changing’ to ‘breaking – they don’t break, they just grow), and the fact that I didn’t have a single sixth-former out of a fairly reasonably-sized sixth form: not one. I don’t know whether that was my fault or their fault, but we struggled to reach that age group. On the other hand I was very confident about the quality of the girls’ voices. There was some real talent there. Clarion-voiced Lisa was a real turn-up and in a superb example of nominative determinism(had her parents had an inkling?), Melody Chege turned out to have a lovely melodic voice. Even so, in my selected 30 for the choir of 25 plus 5 reserves, I only had 19 definites and 11 maybes.

Quite soon after gathering the choir together to start work (it was my Fame moment: ‘This is where the real audition begins!’), I hit a problem. I wanted to include a girl called Chelsea Campbell in the choir, but she was in the middle of what they call in educational circles a ‘managed move’, which meant she was being relocated to another school. Nobody would say why but I assume she’d been in trouble of some kind. Although I had not spent more than five minutes with her, the moment when the head told me she couldn’t be in the choir was included in the documentary.

After the programme aired I received a bunch of letters stating that it was unfair and that I should have fought harder with Chris Modi for her inclusion, but it wasn’t as if I was pre-warned, ‘Go in there and fight for Chelsea’ – Chris said no and I had to respect his decision. The letters all said ‘how wrong the school was’, but in fact as far as the school was concerned it was quite a minor administrative decision: she doesn’t go to this school any more, so she can’t be in the choir. Although it might have appeared unjust, that was the reality. Chelsea had a rough couple of years at Northolt and it was time for her to move on. Goodness knows what running the choir would have been like if she had stayed, because she was very feisty; she had it written all over her face. At least I had a choir. I can’t say I was leaping about with joy. I had some great singers and some concerns, but although the choir was imperfect, I could start rehearsals with them.

We began with a bump. From the very first scales I could hear some distinctly unpleasant noises akin to a vacuum cleaner being started up or the braying of a clearly unwell donkey. Nevertheless I was resolutely chirpy: I would make this group sing if it killed me.

In order to enter the World Choir Games each choir has to submit a recording as well as the repertoire for the final performance. I was taking a risk since the choir had been together for only a few weeks. Normally I would not have submitted a repertoire until I knew what they sounded like – how can you tell what an imaginary choir will be able to achieve? I certainly didn’t know what sound I would ultimately be able to draw from the Northolt High School choir. I hoped it wouldn’t be the sick donkey one. Also, I would never generally make a recording until the choir had been properly rehearsed, so we were ridiculously unprepared for what came next.

After only a few sessions with the choir, I took them down to a local recording studio in Chiswick to make a CD. We had a limited amount of time, about an hour or so, to record ‘Can You Feel the Love Tonight’ from The Lion King. It was one of my first times in a recording studio, so I was learning the ins and outs of the technique while the kids thought they’d hit the big time and were buzzing about finding themselves in a studio.

Early in our development though this was, we didn’t have a choice because the submission had to go in around the Christmas holidays. I was spooked by this and so was really determined to make the recording as good as we possibly could despite time being against us. However, I couldn’t work miracles. Some of the singers hadn’t yet learnt the notes.

For me a particular low point was when I asked Raul, one of the less confident singers, not to sing on one of the takes. I was caught between wanting to create a recording that would get us into the World Choir Games and appearing heavy-handed and insensitive to a boy who was doubtless trying his best. The fact was that Raul was brilliantly keen and had positioned himself right in front of the microphone. He was bellowing. And it wasn’t sounding great. I knew it, the choir knew it and the recording engineer told me that it was obliterating the sound of the rest of the basses and tenors. I tried moving him back a little. That didn’t work (I could still hear him). I made a snap decision, which I regretted later: I asked him not to sing.

I learnt a valuable lesson from this moment. There is a balance to be struck between artistic ideals and educational motivation. I got it wrong that day. That is, of course, what I feared: that my mistakes would be highlighted on BBC Two and as I watched myself back months later I cursed the decision and hoped that the public and Raul would forgive me.

Would I do the same today? I hope I would have found a better way to ask him, perhaps more sensitively suggesting that he sing more quietly because his ‘powerful voice’ was cutting through or some other way of sugaring the pill. So do I regret asking Raul to pipe down? Yes.

To his immeasurable credit Raul bowed out of the take and we got something down that was passably in tune. In retrospect, most of the singers were shouting, but they had very little experience of singing, a lack which was matched only by my own inexperience of the situation.

This was a moment that I reflected on for months and which I believe gave rise to my working method for series two: Boys Don’t Sing … but I’m getting ahead of myself.

After we had finished singing, we went into the control booth to listen to the playback. This is always an amazing moment. Ashley, one of the younger girls who had a feisty attitude and a neat turn of phrase, turned to me with a look of shock on her face and said, ‘You can hear everything …’. She was horrified because she had thought, as many people do, that there was ‘studio magic’ that would suddenly make them sound good.

It was their first experience of hearing themselves singing. They were quite shocked that all the sections that were rough around the edges could be heard. They had had enough rehearsals to know the music and wanted to get it right, so they were alarmed when it didn’t sound absolutely perfect.

I don’t think they were all that impressed with the CD (I know I wasn’t), although Rhonda played it to her mum, who cried buckets when she heard it. Bless her for that. For Rhonda the recording studio was the moment that changed things. ‘We hadn’t really bonded with anyone else in the group. We knew people, but it was still, “Oh, hi.” But at the studio we had a chance to go, “This is actually serious. Let’s do it and enjoy it”, and we started talking.’

The choir members might have been starting to bond more, but I was really only just getting to know them. Because the Northolt High School badge had a phoenix emblazoned on it we had by now decided to call ourselves the Phoenix Choir. We were hoping to set the competition on fire or something like that. Or at least that’s what we said at the time. Fighting talk.

The truth was that it was very early days. By Christmas I had merely done a few warm-up rehearsals with the choir and just about got them through learning one song. I certainly hadn’t taught them to sing at that point. We had a seriously long way to go. I had the triple pressure of pleasing the school, creating a choir for the World Choir Games and making something worthy of BBC Two. And so the sleepless nights began.

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