What a fantastic day!

Yesterday the BBC Radio 3 Choir of the Year 2006 audition days began with a bang at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester.

It was really busy as 11 Choirs made up of almost 400 singers and their 200 supporters plus members of the public all arrived at the venue to take part in or listen to two audition sessions.

In the morning we auditioned the Children's and Youth choirs. It was nice to see a mixture of previous entrants and new faces. We started off the day with a quick hello from the judges Gillian Dibden and Tolga Kashif, followed by a morning workshop from David Lawrence - who had everyone in the auditorium (including supporters, ushers and the Choir of the Year team) on their feet as he led us all through a series of vocal (and physical!) warm up activities.

Then it was time for some serious singing. The Audition Days are all about supporting each other and the packed house didn't disappoint us as they enthusiastically welcomed the first choir, the Kinder Junior Singers, onto the stage. We really wanted to let the audience know what the judges thought of each performance so after each choir both Gillian and Tolga had a chance to talk to the house and give a quick summary of their judging. Two hours later following singing from The Ryleys School Senior Choir, Midnight Voices, Pope Pius X Catholic High School Gospel Choir and the Leeds Girls High School Chamber Choir it was decision time.

With the hard bit over for the choirs it was David Lawrence's job to help them forget about the deliberations going on upstairs in the judging room and he led a second workshop which once again had the whole of the Burntwood Opera Theatre rocking!

Away in the judging room we were frantically adding up scores as the judges finished writing up their notes. Choirs are given marks out of 15 for each of three elements:

  Technical Achievement
  Performance
  Musicality

Those with the highest marks go through. The winners were decided and we led the judges and Kate Jones from Radio 3 back to the stage to announce the results.

The judges and Kate Jones all thanked the audience and although the audience were very nice to them I know they were desperate to hear the results! Finally, Kinder Junior Singers and Pope Pius X Catholic High School Gospel Choir were declared the winners in the Children's and Youth Choirs respectively. The audience voiced their approval and the Choir of the Year team started to prepare for the second session.

The afternoon audition was for the Adult and Open category choirs. We ran through it in the same way and saw performances from Sense of Sound, Impromptu, The White Rosettes, Walsall Peoples Choir, Bolsterstone Male Voice Choir and Opus 44. This is the fifth Choir of the Year competition I have been involved in and this was session had the most diverse repertoire I've ever seen! (click here to see a copy of the programme, session 1 and session 2) The Sense of Sound performed music by Sting and the Artful Dodger (definitely a first for the competition!), the White Rosettes showed barbershop at it's best and the judges were both moved by the passion in the performance by the Bolsterstone Male Voice Choir and at the end of the afternoon once again the audience were enthusiastic in their response as these three choirs were later all named as winners in the Open or Adult categories.

I really enjoyed this audition day and hope it's a template for the rest of them - all the days are open to the public - why don't you come along and see/hear for yourself!

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