Camden Youth Choirs – a bespoke choral work for over 100 young voices
About Camden Youth Choirs
Camden Youth Choirs (CYC) is a family of choirs rehearsing weekly in term time across Camden Music Service’s Saturday centres.
Camden Youth Choir is an all-comers choir for Year 6 to Year 13 (10-18 years), singing S(S)ATB. There are currently 85 members currently attending regularly.
CamJam Voices is an all-comers choir for Year 3 to Year 5 (7-10 years), with treble voices singing two-part homophonic harmony or three parts in rounds/layers. There are 26 members.
Camden Early Choirs is an auditioned chamber choir drawn from Camden Youth Choir. Members are from Year 8 to 13 (12-18 years). They perform together and as two separate smaller vocal ensembles, Camden Young Singers (SSA or SSAA) and Camden Senior Singers S(S)ATB. This choir tackles more challenging repertoire and works to achieve a more refined choral sound. The Early Choirs has 25 members currently.
Established in 1998, the choirs perform regularly together in venues across Camden. The auditioned choirs reached the national selection stage of Choir of the Year in 2008 and 2010. We made a CD showcasing the choirs, Sing of Good Things, in 2017.
Like many choirs for young people, the distribution of voices is top heavy in the larger CYC, with Soprano 1 the biggest (and youngest) section and Tenors and Basses the smallest sections – however as most of the ATB singers are “home-grown” (having come through our choral programme) and experienced, we do pretty well at producing a balanced sound overall.
We envisage a piece written to use the specific forces and capabilities of the CYC family of choirs.
The choir team has an accompanist and we would favour piano accompaniment (this could be with additional instruments, percussion or backline, depending on style) but are open to ideas.
The brief
Five-minute piece for Camden Youth Choirs.
A piece that exploits the different elements in the CYC family – e.g. the tutti achievable with over 100 singers, the harmonies achievable by layering the different choirs, and variations in the texture that showcase the capabilities of the different choirs.
Writing that is idiomatic for children’s voices and developing teenage singers as appropriate, so that it is in step with their development and enables them to sound at their best.
We are open minded about genre, and about text – but we would like a piece that is musically satisfying for the choir, that includes strong melodic writing, and where the text is relatable to young people. This does not necessarily mean that it describes the experience of young people – more that the text should not have an adult (or overly childish) sensibility that they cannot comfortably convey.
Other details
Camden Music Service would prefer to commission someone who is underrepresented in the Western classical music world.
There is a fee of £1500 available, to also cover the creation of a score and vocal parts.
Draft Timeline:
By January 31: share ideas with the CYC choir leaders
February and March: workshop ideas in Saturday morning rehearsals
April and May: Saturday morning rehearsals
May: choral concert where the piece will be premiered (venue tbc)
APPLY
Deadline for submissions: 6pm on Monday 23 December.
Submission requirements: Two short examples of your music (up to 1’ each).
250 words or 1 minute of audio or video briefly describing who you are and how you would meet the brief.
We’re especially interested to know your experience of choral singing/writing for and with young people. A copy of a current DBS certificate, if you have one.
Your application will be reviewed by Rachel Barnes (Deputy Head of Camden Music Service), Josh Kaye (primary music co-ordinator), Ros Savournin and Ezra Burke (CYC Conducting Team) and members of Camden Youth Choirs.
If you’re shortlisted, we will invite you to an informal interview.