Steel City Choristers: Steely determination

This article was originally published in our Winter 2023 issue. Click here to subscribe to our quarterly print magazine and be the first to read our Spring issue features.

‘We had to sing outside during lockdown,’ recalls Kate Caroe, who chairs the trustees of the Sheffield-based Steel City Choristers (SCC), ‘so, together with a social inclusion charity, we did a carol concert outdoors – in an allotment. It was funny to think back to the previous Christmas when we had been singing in the cathedral – and then there we were in our wellies, singing among the vegetable patches. But it was lovely; a really nice community event.’

If you were looking for a setting to symbolise regrowth and home-grown resourcefulness, you could hardly choose a more appropriate location than a community-owned garden. But the circumstances that led to the formation of SCC during the pandemic were not happy ones.

In July 2020, the dean and chapter of Sheffield Cathedral announced the closure of the existing choir. A subsequent internal report by the bishop of Sheffield found that the decision to disband the choir, which would eventually be replaced by an un-auditioned choir under new musical leadership, was taken with ‘no meaningful consultation’. Moreover, it was accompanied by a ‘failure to deliver a clear and consistent message about the reasons for the decision’, according to a summary of the report’s findings.

In the aftermath of the decision, a team of people associated with the cathedral choir – already a close-knit group thanks to regular WhatsApp and Zoom communication – began talking seriously about reviving it. They included Caroe, an experienced Kodály method tutor, and her husband Chris (four of their children had been choristers at the cathedral). The idea took shape for a community-orientated choir of mixed children’s and adult voices, meeting regularly to sing repertoire from the English church music tradition and with musical training and development at its heart.

They were later joined by Joshua Stephens, furloughed as master of music at the cathedral at the time of the announcement, who began working with SCC when he resigned from the post. The team now includes people with experience in management and government policy as well as those with musical training and an advisory panel drawn from church music, community projects and arts and education administration. The overall musical direction is now in the hands of Eleanor Jarvis, a music graduate from the University of Manchester who replaced Stephens in September 2022.

Aided with resources from a crowdfunding appeal and from several grant-awarding bodies, SCC now has an auditioned membership comprising boys and girls aged 6-18, with a dedicated section for ‘changing voices’, as well as adult altos, tenors and basses. Although it has a regular rehearsal venue at St John the Baptist church, Owlerton, SCC does not currently have a dedicated home. Instead, it offers its services to churches who might want to incorporate a choral element into their worship.

‘We sing in a lot of different venues around the Sheffield area,’ explains Jarvis, ‘one of our main pathways is singing evensong. Many congregations are not used to that particular service or even that aspect of church music. We try to reach out and really show the benefit of evensong and choral music.’

It also seeks out collaborations in secular contexts and at non-religious venues too, such as the North Star Science School, a South Yorkshire initiative that encourages children to pursue STEM careers. Another example is their ‘Reasons to Sing’ project – now a downloadable resource (steelcitychoristers.org.uk) – that developed out of a year-long collaboration with a local social inclusion project that began in May 2021.

Shining example: SCC collaborates with secular organisations including North Star Science School (Image courtesy of Steel City Choristers)

‘We partnered with the Parsons Cross initiative, who work with people who need practical and emotional support.’ explains Caroe. ‘We asked them what their favourite songs were and we chose six and had them arranged into SATB and sang them. But we looked at the story behind why it was their favourite song and what purpose it serves for them emotionally.’ The choir would then look for connections between those songs and music from the choir’s repertoire. ‘There was a young man with autism who listens to Mr Blue Sky every morning when he wakes up because it’s part of his routine. We connected that with the Byrd four-part Mass because going to church and hearing or singing a mass is part of people’s routine: it sets them up for the week and the music provides that emotional structure for people.’

Is it a deliberate choice to keep sacred music as the cornerstone of the choir’s repertoire? ‘Definitely,’ says Caroe, ‘because that’s the music that we love. We were excited about the idea of taking the church and cathedral music out to other communities because we would love more people to hear it. Suddenly we had this freedom to take the music round the city and make it more accessible and friendly.’

Conversely, the choir is determined that the diversity of the community in which it is based should be allowed into its work. Jarvis is frequently in Sheffield schools running choral workshops and singing sessions, and the choir offers an opportunity for primary school children to sing with the choir through a ‘Be A Chorister At Christmas’ event.

‘One of our main aims as an organisation, as a choir, is to really diversify the cathedral choral tradition, so as director of music one of my aims is to broaden the music that we sing and the venues that we sing at. Many of our choristers speak different languages and so we can bring in music that isn’t just written hundreds of years ago by European white men. We are exploring diverse composers, women composers, singing pieces in different languages – we’re doing a piece in Spanish and one of our choristers has been helping with translation and pronunciation.’

She adds that choir practice at SCC is not only about preparing pieces for services: ‘We have junior and senior choristers and we offer Kodály sessions for them. In our rehearsals the juniors will have that one-to-one musical guidance and that musical play and musical learning. With our seniors we have lots of youth work and really talk about why we sing what we sing, we talk about the venues that we sing at, and really help guide them in that way.’

Caroe says that, although SCC was born in uncertain circumstances, its founders were quick to want to set it up on a solid, accountable basis. Transparent too – its policies on safeguarding and financial security are posted online. As a result, Jarvis, only a few months into her job, is already thinking about long-term plans to develop their work further, perhaps expanding beyond Sheffield.

In the meantime, Jarvis’s priority is to consolidate SCC’s work so far in their home city, acknowledging their roots. ‘If you don’t have a cathedral choir, where are you going to find that choral cathedral education?’ she says, ‘Steel City is keeping it going. It’s really important to recognise where that began: out of the cathedral choir.

‘Out of this disappointment, they carried on and persevered.’