Aug 17 2015: British choral director, Ralph Allwood, reports on his recent experiences in China and teaching his choral course at YK Pao School.
I've just spent a week in Shanghai with 70 local children and fourteen staff, half from the UK and half from China, preparing a programme of light and serious music at the YK Pao School in Shanghai.
The course was non-residential, so most of the 7-15 year old children came from Shanghai. The children were younger and less experienced to start with than on any previous courses I have run, but they were extraordinarily biddable, and a combination of humour from my fellow course leader, Martyn Ford, and persistence from me, coaxed them through a steep learning curve.
Philip Sohmen, who founded the YK Pao School in Shanghai in 2007 in memory of his grandfather, the industrialist, Sir Yue-Kong Pao, had asked Tony Little, then headmaster of Eton College in the UK, to suggest a way of holding a choral course at his new school. Tony Little referred him to me. I had already been trying to work out a way of bringing a course to Shanghai, so this was perfect.
Philip Sohmen had given his staff the task of setting up and running the course in Shanghai this summer. This they did with enthusiasm, dedication, efficiency and imagination. We decided that it should be non-residential, and this turned out to be a good way of running it. Children arrived with their parents (always on time!) at 8 o'clock each morning, and stayed till 6pm for us to rehearse with them and devise activities.
My policy with all week-long courses I run (and the grand running total is around 160 at the moment!) is not to audition. The criterion I am most interested in is enthusiasm, and in my experience this doesn't necessarily correlate with musical ability. Yes, one can inculcate enthusiasm, but there are still some of us who have an inherited love of music. Our young singers in Shanghai came from as far and wide as Australia and the United States, but the vast majority were the locals from Shanghai, half of the course from the YK Pao School itself.
Warming up
Ian Hopkins, who runs the Junior Choral Courses in the UK with Martyn Ford and me, set up our contribution to the course, providing staff, music and administrative expertise. The programme was based on the UK Junior Choral Courses, so as well as full practices alternating between me and Martyn Ford, we had sectional practices, separate consort groups, warm-ups and musicianship lessons led by a young and extremely able music staff. Alex Hodgkinson, in charge of the choir at Marlborough College in the UK, planned the course day by day and played the piano for Martyn Ford's part of the programme. He and Martyn had an excellent way with the children, and kept them laughing almost as much as singing. Five very able members of the local staff helped and observed us with a view to taking a larger role another time. Dominic Murtagh, Director of Music at the YK Pao Junior School, acted as a most effective link man.
We found the children delightful, interested and eager to learn. It was very good to find that they picked up things in English and Latin pretty quickly. The average age of participants was low, which meant that the overall level of musicianship was fairly low to start with. But these week-long, intensive courses can give children what would take a year at a reasonably musical school to achieve, and the participants went away better musicians as well as having had a highly enjoyable time.
It was so sweet to hear them singing Who is Sylvia in Mandarin. I got them to teach me some Mandarin, and found that they were far less patient as teachers than I!
Because the course was non-residential, we were able to demonstrate our progress to the parents as they came in day after day to collect their children. At the end of each day the staff relaxed over an excellent meal in a Shanghai restaurant.
The closing concert (with staff providing alto, tenor and bass parts) included three movements from the Faur?Requiem and was a triumph! The organisers have asked for two consecutive courses next year, so we are now planning dates. I currently have ideas for other international courses in Melbourne, Dubai, Greenwich in Connecticut, Vietnam and Italy, and I am hoping to find local partners as enthusiastic as the YK Pao School.
