Chester Cathedral Choir

On Monday 8th June, the girl choristers travelled to Emmanuel Church in Didsbury to broadcast the BBC Radio 4 long wave Daily Service.

In order to arrive at the church with enough time to rehearse, we left Abbey Square at 7 a.m. In spite of a 5.30 a.m. wake up call, we were all very enthusiastic about singing live on the radio. Mr. Rushforth, Mr. Roberts and all of the parents and cathedral staff who attended the broadcast were treated to an early morning recital by the unwarmed up singing voices of the choristers as we worked our way through our vast repertoire on the coach travelling to the church.

As we arrived we met the producer for the broadcast, Mr Shipley, who complimented us on our previous BBC Radio 3 choral evensong broadcast and talked about the role of the Daily Service as a ‘spiritual lifeline’ for many of the listeners. Then it was straight down to business. After a quick warm up we rehearsed the three pieces we had prepared, ‘Love One Another’ by Samuel Wesley and two hymns ‘When I needed a neighbour’ and ‘A new commandment’. We received positive feedback from the BBC team, but were informed that in order to meet the time requirements of the service, we would need to include another hymn! In true chorister style we took the new hymn, ‘God be in my head’, and polished it to perfection in ten minutes flat!

After a break and a full run through with Judy Merry, the BBC presenter, all that was left to do was wait for the broadcast to begin at 9.45. Fifteen minutes later we all breathed a sigh of relief as the performance went off without a hitch. The whole broadcast was extremely successful and the BBC team commented on our ‘unique sound’ as a girls’ choir and how, as a result of Mr. Rushforth and Mr. Roberts’ training, our musicality shone through.

Knowing that we had broadcast to roughly 250,000 listeners left us all on a high and the atmosphere on the coach journey home was electric as we had a celebratory breakfast of pain au chocolat!

As we pulled back into Abbey Square at 11 a.m. we were greeted by delighted and proud parents who had listened to the broadcast. What a way to start the week!
The broadcast will be available on iPlayer for the next week.

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