Adult Pop Choir Starts at the Community Centre

There was a fantastic start to Hatch Warren’s own adult Pop Choir at their launch night on Wednesday 13th April at the Hatch Warren Community Centre. Claire Holmes, who has lived in Hatch Warren for nearly nine years with husband Marco and three teenage daughters, has been running instrumental and vocal classes for children and now has responded to requests from parents to start an adult choir. So she opened up a brand new session in the newly extended Lounge area after looking for a group of local people, men and women, who enjoy singing.

The evening saw 20 people attend, all mixed abilities and ages who came together to start creating their first musical experience as a team. What a fantastic night it turned out to be!

The group was broken down into three sections responsible for different parts of the song starting with some rather odd noises for the first group, some pretty ooooo’s and ahhhhh’s for the second group and then moving on to the main lyrical part for group three. Everyone had a role to play in what turned out to be a masterclass and everyone had a smile on their faces too.

Claire put the sections together, layering them and changing up the song turned out to be a huge amount of fun and everyone involved did marvelously well. Even though many had never sung before (other than in the shower) and a few were fairly nervous, they quickly began to experience how rewarding it was to sing in a group. The initial song choice was ‘Stand By Me’ a classic that made it easy to sing as everyone knew the tune. They then took the plunge to mix in another very popular song which added a brilliant twist to the structure. Claire made the instructions easy to follow and everyone was surprised and delighted at how well they had done on this first night.

The choir will meet Wednesdays in term time at 8.15 – 9.45 pm in the Lounge of HWCC. The cost is £7.50 per session paid termly (or pro-rata) plus, eventually, a choir T-shirt. No previous singing or musical experience is needed, only an interest in joining with adults, i.e. 16+, in having a fun time.

And Claire said “This first night’s experience convinced me that this was one of the best musical decisions I have ever made. I am so confident about the progress the choir will make that I am going to book a performance in July, how exciting!”