On a weekday morning at the end of June, countless groups of school children in differently-coloured polo shirts are flocking through the gates of Hampton Court Palace (HCP), marvelling at the scale and grandeur of the sprawling red-brick building on the bank of the Thames in south west London. But only four groups of children head directly for the Chapel Royal: Year 4 and 5 students from four primary schools in the neighbouring London Borough of Hounslow who have come to give a concert with the professional adult singers and boy choristers of the palace's prestigious choir.
A choral foundation
The event marked the end of the first year of Songstars, a pioneering programme offering enhanced singing opportunities and support for children and their teachers from state schools within the surrounding area. The initiative came from the Choral Foundation of His Majesty's Chapel Royal, HCP, a charity set up in 2011 to ensure that future congregations and visitors would continue to experience the palace's rich musical heritage, which dates back five centuries. It has funded a meticulous overhaul of the chapel's historic organ; it supports the employment of its director of music Carl Jackson, assistant director of music Rufus Frowde and adult altos, tenors and basses; and it helps to ensure that the boy trebles, known as the Children of the Chapel Royal and drawn from a range of different state and independent schools, continue to receive a first-class musical education, not just through belonging to the choir but through bursaries that cover the cost of instrumental, singing or theory lessons.
Wider access
Support from the foundation has facilitated Open Days for families that introduce the choir to people who might not even know it exists; but the aim is to go further than that in promoting awareness of the Chapel and its music, and making it accessible to a much wider community than the regular congregation who attend Sunday services.
‘I vividly recall being at the Chapel organ in July 2015, when the education department of The Sixteen choir worked with over 200 Key Stage 2 pupils from Tower Hamlets and Croydon to put on a performance focusing on music for royal occasions as part of the BBC Ten Pieces project,’ says Jackson. ‘The enthusiasm of the pupils then was incredible. I've no doubt that pupils are enthused and inspired by this particular type of music-making and are thrilled at the opportunity of doing so within this unique and special setting.’
‘There may be some for whom it becomes a passion, and we would love to see them at the Chapel's annual chorister-experience days,’ he adds. ‘But the primary purpose of Songstars is to support classroom teachers in their teaching of singing in certain maintained primary schools in the area.’
Principal team
The trustees of the foundation sought advice from the Choir Schools Association on how to set up their project and were pointed in the direction of professional tenor, vocal coach and choral conductor Charles MacDougall. As a result of his feedback (‘They had an exciting vision, but I sent them four pages of A4 telling them how it could be better!’), MacDougall was invited to become a trustee of the foundation and take responsibility for leading this strand of work.
His first task was to appoint Sarah Rennix as programme manager; her previous roles have included managing the Genesis Sixteen training programme for young professional choral singers and working as creative learning director for the Britten Sinfonia and as project development manager for the Pimlico Music Foundation in Central London.
Then Laurel Neighbour was chosen as animateur for the project, to run singing workshops in schools and CPD sessions for teachers – partly, Rennix explains, because she brought a particularly good suggestion for a themed programme to her second interview. ‘It was well thought out for the age-groups and their levels, what the teachers could manage and what they could achieve in a year; and included a lesson plan that showed us how she would bring in warm-ups and different elements of musicianship. She wouldn't be just teaching songs.’ Neighbour has a wide range of experience in running large-scale education projects, and she trained with MacDougall at the Voices Foundation. ‘That meant she really understood the process of supporting and upskilling teachers, which is what this project is really about.’
© Johnny Millar
Two singers from Marlborough Primary School, Hounslow
Partner schools
Choosing the schools they would work with also involved a selection process, run in tandem with the London Borough of Hounslow Music Service. ‘Their chief executive Oonagh Barry was so helpful and responsive in helping us to find schools that were the right fit for us,’ says Rennix. ‘We wanted them to be from areas of higher deprivation, not the easy schools that sign up for everything and have lots going on – a mixture of ones that the music service had not really worked with much in the past and ones that Oonagh knew would engage fully and whose headteachers would understand the level of involvement required in terms of time and finance. We invited a selection of schools to come to an online Q&A session about the project, so showing up to that was hurdle number one; then they had to apply to take part, which was another indicator of potential commitment.’
From ten applications, they chose four schools: Smallberry Green, Green Dragon, Marlborough and Hounslow Town. ‘But we invited all the schools that applied and others in the area to access our CPD: sheet-music, lyrics and backing-tracks, background information, related warm-ups.’
Personal energy and depth
Because this was a pilot project, it had two strands: one of the schools received weekly singing workshops, with Laurel Neighbour, for their pupils for a full year, and the other three for just a term as part of an arts carousel. In future, the plan is to work with just two schools for a whole year each. ‘It's not about reaching more children, it's about depth of impact.’
As so often with partnerships, one of the biggest challenges was embedding the concept in the school timetable and making sure that the workshop schedule was not interrupted by the unavailability of rooms or the relevant class being off-site for some reason. Conversely, sessions worked best when the school's own teachers were fully involved. ‘For example, at Smallberry Green there is a double-form entry, so I was working with 60 kids at a time; but the class teachers were in the room and they have a music specialist, so it was great. In fact, they made such good progress that they were able to do some creative music-making and wrote their own “Showstarter” song for the concert.’
Both Rennix and Neighbour were surprised that the music specialists seemed just as grateful for this opportunity as the class teachers and did not feel patronised. In some cases, Rennix points out, this was because a music specialist is not necessarily a singer or a conductor – while Neighbour observes that the personal energy of the teachers was as important as their musical ability in inspiring the children.
Songstars concert
The Hampton Court showcase included a mix of African songs, a ‘Friday Afternoons’ song by Jonathan Dove which was quite challenging to teach but came to life when the children were able to perform it with the HCP choir, and the two obvious highlights of the morning: ‘Zadok the Priest’ and ‘Mr. Blue Sky’. The children were clearly thrilled by the building excitement of the organ introduction in the simplified arrangement of Zadok (provided by BBC Ten Pieces) and by Electric Light Orchestra's classic anthem, which took them naturally into their head voices without them even realising they were singing very high.
Presenter Charles MacDougall's script set everything in the context of the stunning surroundings of the Chapel Royal, linking the music to the recent Coronation and to the spectacular ceiling with its images of stars and water. The result was a performance that the Master of the King's Music, Judith Weir CBE, who was in the audience, described as one of the best events of its type she has seen.
Oonagh Barry, too, says she has been immensely impressed by the quality of the project, from Neighbour's skill as an animateur to the varied and challenging repertoire selected for the children to perform, and with how the Songstars team have kept legacy at the heart of the programme. ‘We look forward to continuing this partnership with the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court Palace, and to future performances there.’
But perhaps the last word should go to Oscar, a student at Smallberry Green: ‘The 28th June was an extraordinary day for me and every other child who came with us … We sang songs from all across the globe, but best of all were the Royal Choir who opened the show with a beautiful song. We were all very lucky to have had this opportunity.’
