THE TIMES:

I can't help noticing Harry Cruickshank, because he's tall and he's half a
second off the Stevie Wonder beat. I don't know if he can sing or not, because
of the sheer volume of sound from this 170-strong choir, mostly women, stepping
mostly as one to the right, then to the left, and snapping their fingers. All
raise their arms in supplication to the dark-haired woman on the keyboard at the
end of the assembly hall and roar in three-part harmony: "Ooooh, ooh, baby, here
I am! Signed, sealed, delivered, I'm yours! Ooooh, ooh, baby . . . "

"This choir took a bit of finding," says Cruickshank, 48, a marketing director
from Woking, Surrey. "Most demand a certain quality of voice, and I haven't had
that since I turned 13. Here, you don't have to audition; it's about singing to
the best of your ability, with energy and passion. And there's something about
the atmosphere of singing in a group — well, it's quite powerful. It's
visceral."

Rock Choir is visceral. Audiences are perplexed to find themselves in tears as
the unashamedly populist home-counties phenomenon belts out pop, gospel and
Motown hits in ever bigger venues, three times a year. (When the choir opened
Guilfest last year, the Radio 2 stage almost collapsed under the massed weight
of 300 hip-shimmying, finger-snapping bodies).

Choir members get watery-eyed in rehearsal. I did myself last week: excusable
with Handel's Messiah, but frankly embarrassing over Labi Siffre's "Something
inside so strong, I know that I can make it, but you're doing me wrong, so
wrong". I think it's to do with massed endeavour, with the miracle of 170
ordinary voices melding to create an astonishingly rich and funky wall of sound.
There is also the poignancy of the faces behind the voices: anxious or
liberated, wrinkled or glowing; housewife, teacher, barrister, widow; marketing
director with bobbing adam's apple

Read More:-
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article5\
933599.ece


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Reposted by A Cappella News
http://www.acappellanews.com