Lily Newman, a member of the Holles Singers, the reigning BBC Youth Choir of the Year, on why being part of it is so special.
The Holles Singers has played a big role of the Music Department at Lady Eleanor Holles (LEH) School since long before I was a student there. It forms the vocal elite. There was always something special for me about the Holles Singers and the wide range of beautiful music they performed, as I sat in the audience at our numerous school concerts.
Several years later, that same versatility was commended by the judges of the BBC Youth Choir of the Year Competition 2010, when I stood on stage with the rest of the choir in Birmingham. The feeling in that moment was indescribable.
Being a part of any choir is an enjoyable and rewarding experience, but it was the unique and, at times, slightly eccentric dynamic of the Holles Singers that had taken us to this point – and that feeling.
It is universally felt within the choir that we owe the majority of our success to our conductor Miranda Ashe, Director of Music at LEH, and her husband Brendan (as well as their young son Richard, who we adopted as our mascot and who can always be relied upon to steal biscuits and cause chaos under the encouragement of 40-odd 13 to 18-year-old girls suddenly turned into nine-year-old boys).
Mrs Ashe has enough personality and talent for a room full of professional comedians. This, combined with her stringent work ethic, never failed to inspire us to do the best we possibly could -and then push ourselves a little further to be that little bit better. She always ensured that every rehearsal was fun and rewarding, as well as generally more than a little chaotic! The sense of achievement felt by the choir after the competition was made even better by her obvious pride in us and the knowledge that we had managed to realise the dream she had been guiding us towards for over a year.
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