John’s Boys: Change The People, Or Change The People..?
In 2023, Welsh Choir Johns' Boys performed a stunning cover of Harry Styles' 'Falling' in the Semi-Finals of Britain’s Got Talent…
To the casual observer, a video of the semi-final of Britain’s Got Talent is just another piece of consumable social media that the algorithms of YouTube, Facebook or TikTok might send our way. However, this video is remarkable. Extraordinary in fact.
Recent research tells us that male choirs in the UK are dying: an irrelevant remnant of bygone years. The repertoire is stagnant and the average age of singers is somewhere north of 65: yet here we see a young male chorus singing a Harry Styles cover delivering an exceptional performance, both technically and emotionally. How?
The role of a choral conductor working with amateur singers is somewhat strange: equal parts musician, social worker, stand-up comedian and life coach. Your training inspires you to pursue musical excellence, yet the realities of ‘real life’ soon teach you the gulf between your imagined ideals and the practicalities of the possible.
Realistically your expertise as a trainer and educator can only make a certain amount of difference in the skill levels and performance of the singers in front of you. The adage ‘change the people, or change the people’ reminds us that recruiting more experienced, competent or qualified singers – recruiting ‘better’ singers – will make more difference to the end result than the most inspiring rehearsal ever could.
What does this have to do with the John’s Boys male chorus? Whilst they were catapulted to relative fame (in male choir terms) by their participation in Britain’s Got Talent 2023, this was preceded by astounding successes at Côr Cymru, Llangollen International Eisteddfod and at the National Eisteddfod of Wales. Subsequently their 2024 national tour brought male choir performance to new audiences across the country.
These successes, to a certain extent, have been made possible by the innovative recruitment model employed. As is clear from this video, and backed up by their website and social media posts, John’s Boys count amongst their members an astonishing number of first-study singers from the Royal Northern College of Music, BIMM Institute, and other music colleges.
Whilst the recruitment of conservatoire students is a longstanding and accepted practice in the brass band world, it is virtually unheard of in the male voice choir sector.
There’s a chicken-or-egg situation here: ‘the choir’s great so it attracts exceptional singers’, or ‘the choir’s great because it includes exceptional singers’. This is potentially impossible to answer, but what we can be sure of is that conductor Aled Phillips is inspirational. To have the strength of personality to convince so many early-career singers to buy in to the John’s Boys journey is certainly praiseworthy, and potentially an inspiration to other male choir leaders.
Change the people, or change the people?
