LUTON CHOIR GREW FROM SUNDAY SCHOOL GROUP

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27884, 4 February 1956, Page 2

LUTON CHOIR GREW FROM SUNDAY SCHOOL GROUP

NEWS FOR WOMEN

[From the United Kingdom Information ServiceJ

LONDON, January 26. Audiences throughout Britain have neen cheering the Luton Girls’ Choir for nearly 20 years. When the choir sang some time ago at a Welsh Eisteddfod, one of the great traditional music festivals of about 11,000 musically-minded Welshmen rose and cheered the 70 young English girlsInvariably, when the choir visits a town for the first time, it is given a civic reception. The Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress of London receiyed the girls just before their first recital at St. Paul’s Cathedral, when the queue to hear them was so great that it wound round the outside of the Cathedral until members at the tail of the queue met those at the head.

The choir’s musical director and founder is by profession a seed salesman. He is Mr Arthur Davies, genial and fatherly, whose musical ability and keen sense of showmanship has raised a Methodist Sunday School choir to the status of a national institution which has raised more than £50.000 for charity, much of it for the National Children’s Home near Luton, the choir’s home town in the county of Bedfordshire. Mr Davies keeps strict discipline, insists on good manners, forbids smoking and drinking, and sees to it that the girls are always immaculately dressed and groomed. The choir, as an all-girl ensemble, was founded in 1936. Mr Davies, who as a child sang in his father’s choir at a Luton Methodist Church, had studied the organ and taken lessons in conducting. At the age of 24. he was master of a choir of 100—at another Methodist Church—which he raised to a standard never previously attained by a local choir. He was asked by the Mayor to extend the choir, and make it representative of all the town. But Mr Davies decided, in doing so, to eliminate the boys because their voices broke as soon as they had reached their most useful stage. Distinctive Uniform So. with 35 members, the Luton Girls' Choir came *into being, and gave its first concert in a hall holding fewer than 300 persons. The girls wore blue frocks and red shoes, which have remained their distinctive platform “uniform” ever since.

Before the Second World War, and throughout it, the choir gave concerts in local halls, and by 1945. when its numbers had increased to 80. in towns within easy reach of Luton. About this time the seal was set on its growing fame by an invitation to accom-

pany Richard Tauber in a series of concerts. Today the choir receives more offers of engagements than it can accept. These are of two kinds. In one the choir’s expenses are paid and the profit is devoted to charity; in the other, for a limited number of commercial engagements, the sponsors pay expenses and subscribe to the choir’s funds.

In rehearsal, the choir numbers 120 girls, but for concerts only 70, some of the choristers in training being under 12. Members leave the choir when they marry or reach the age of 23, but they rarely completely sever their links with it. There is an old girls’ association which holds a reunion party every January. The affairs of the choir are administered by a trust, composed of leading citizens of Luton. . From the funds, the girls are compensated when necessary for loss of working time through engagements. Girls are also helped in the strictest confidence from the funds “to fulfil their cultural and professional aspirations.” Charity benefits by the remainder. . Dressing the choir is expensive and costs as much as £l2OO for a renewal of the wardrobe. The wardrobe is the concern of one particular girl, who keeps the dresses and the white collars and cuffs neat and clean, and who also cuts down dresses outgrown by older girls and makes them into dresses for the younger members. The only time members of the choir do not wear their blue dresses when singing is for television appearances. For these there is a group of 30 girls who wear rose pink taffeta. A further eight girls, who perform Scottish dances, wear full traditional Highland dress. Songs the World Loves The choir gives an average of 53 concerts a year, and has appeared at the Royal Variety Command Performance in London before Queen Elizabeth II and at the famous postwar concret hall in London, the Royal Festival Hall.

Only once has the choir had an engagement out of Britain, when it visited Denmark in 1954. Its appeal is not only through the exceptionally fine quality of its singing, but also because its programmes are always of the fine old ballads of other days, of favourite opera, operetta and musical comedy, and beloved sacred songs. They are the sort of songs appropriate for young girls, songs which, as Mr Davies says, “the whole world knows and loves.”