The York Philharmonic Male Voice Choir celebrates its 100th anniversary this year and The Press sat down with its chairman Mike Wash just before one of the final performances of 2024 to share some memories after looking through the archives whilst planning for the special milestone.
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Mike said: “We started thinking about this over two years ago, in terms of inviting our friends from Germany and Holland.
“Unfortunately the whole choirs can’t come over due to various circumstances, but a contingency is coming over.
“They’ve been twinned with us for over 50 years, that’s Münster, and Lochem in The Netherlands.
“What happens is when we meet, we actually pass over what’s called a peace candle, which represents peace in Europe.
“In 2015, we were in Europe for a coming together of all choirs from all European countries celebrating peace in the continent, which was a wonderful occasion.
“So it’s really one of the earliest things to do, along with of course booking venues.”
Mike Wash, chairman of York Philharmonic Male Voice Choir spoke to The Press before a Bar Convent performance on December 13 (Image: Kevin Glenton) Mike added that The Barbican has been booked for a performance from five choirs, and a huge dinner at The Milner York (formerly The Principal York) is in the calendar with invited guests and friends.
He said: “And that’s in one week.
“The Barbican will be a concert with friends of ours mainly, including Harmonia – Malton, Jubilate Ladies’ Choir from Easingwold, Citadel Ladies, a small male choir called Sound Fellows and a contingency from the York RI Golden Rail Band led by Nick Eastwood, which will sound great.
“In addition we’ve got our summer concert which is going to be ‘songs through the years’.
“You can imagine, as we go back to 1925, we’ve had our archivist Colin Hockridge look at the songs we were singing then and we’ve got a sample of songs from each decade to actually sing, to give a flavour of the changing attitudes to the songs.”
Mike said: “In ‘Christmas Traditions’ – our annual four day event at The Citadel in Gillygate – we had footage of us singing Carols in Kirkgate from 1962.
“We’ve sung some form of carol traditions in York every year since then.
“Looking back, Colin is producing a second edition of the book called ‘Sound Fellows’ which traces our history right back from its very start and the images going back to then are wonderful, so I’m definitely looking forward to a reproduction of that.
“’Christmas Traditions’ is a great annual event.
“Word is getting out, there’s momentum happening and for the first time we had an almost full house on the Friday.
“We had 200 people in – we usually get 100 – 120 but on that Friday we had 200.
“It was absolutely packed and a wonderful atmosphere.”
On what keeps a 100-year-old choir stay fresh, Mike said: “One thing is the camaraderie.
“We meet every Monday night after rehearsal in The Snickleway Inn in Goodramgate, that’s been going on for years and years – and new members are always welcome.
“Funnily enough we have tourists coming over, whether its America, and Sweden is another popular one, and they come to listen to us specifically, so we enjoy that social side of things.
“We have a tour every couple of years, we go abroad and we attend various festivals.
“We went to Cork International Festival earlier this year and that was an amazing occasion.
“We were singing with 14 international choirs and we certainly made an impact.
“Every time we sang we got a standing ovation.
“It’s a matter of keeping afresh looking at our repertoire and mixing the old and new – ‘Run’ by Snow Patrol is one of our most requested songs which we mix with West End standards and traditional male voice performances.”
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