London Choral Studio was founded in 2002 as a small vocal ensemble that has a diverse repertiore of music.

We are currently recruiting singers, especially baritones and tenors for concerts next year. We also hope to compete in the BBC Radio 3 Choir of the Year competition and often engage in side projects according to member's niterests.

Our website is www.londonchoralstudio.com and we actively encourage singers of all genres and stardards to approach us for informal auditions.

Hi LCSBass - I just wanted to check that you've cleared this with the moderator beforehand? We're not meant to advertise on the forums.

Cheers

Katyjay

You would probably be better trying www.gerontius.net than here I think.

David

David

LCS have been on Gerontius, and on British Choirs on the Net for a considerable time (many months).

Like all serious choirs, they are having trouble recruiting because they are looking for men, and most serious singers looking for choirs are female.

When choral composers start writing in 5 parts for SSAAMen then the vacancy/applicant ratio will even out. Until then, LCS and their like will have vacancies, and ladies will continue to have to compete much harder for places.

Annoying, but that's life, I'm afraid.

Cheers

Katyjay

A friend who has been trying to recruit more member (both sexes I believe ) for a small London choir for the past year recently told me they had reluctantly decided to disband. Always sorry to hear this.

Katjay: no I didn't clear the post, I was (nievly admittedly) having a "punt" with it. Thus far the mods haven't removed it and I'd hope they don't as I'm not advertising anything per se, just raising awareness of our recruiting issues (and that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!)

We have, as you pointed out, been on Brit Choirs and Gerontius for a while. We do get the occasional request from there as well as via the internet when people run Google searches (part of the reasoning behind the choice of name for the choir, it hits a lot). Mainly though they are women, admittedly some very good, but we have a waiting list now for Sops and Altos because otherwise we'd be dreadfully overbalanced.

We have a small number of very good, very committed men, but our problem is that we comepete with the other choirs they sing with and as they get more in demand we find it harder to organise concerts through worries about the lack of singers. I'd love to have 4 per voice to choose from with the men, but sadly that isn't the case. Equally, part of our problem is maintaining standards because we do want to remain small and perform technically demanding music, and that means having a benchmark which is the other peoblem, finding people who take making music seriously enough to make a commitment to what we do.

My view is simply that I want to enjoy making music and I want to encourage as many as possible to join me in that. For that reason I refuse to admit defeat and shut down the choir, but it takes a considerable effort to recruit and retain.

In that case, LCSBass, why don't you arrange/commission and then recruit for music that reflects the available talent in the market? If you have a waiting list for sopranos and altos, why not look at work which has more scope in the upper voices?

You want to encourage as many as possible to enjoy making music - but not at the expense of including ladies in that.

Regards

Katyjay

Commissioning works usually requires funds, and arranging takes time I don't have. That being said, we have done some pieces by various composers for upper voices and will continue to do so. We quite often break down into sub-groups during concerts, so pieces will be sung SATB 1 per part or 2 per part or SA or any other arrangement that we want to work.

Ultimately this isn't about excluding ladies, it's about wanting to have a choir of about 20 or so singers that gives us the flexibility to do pretty much anything that doesn't require a cast of thousands.