New musical director takes over at Horsham Chamber Choir

“I have been conducting for about ten years now. I have worked with groups all across London and up as far as Enfield and down to Burgess Hill. I've worked with a variety of different groups and choral societies and upper voices and some smaller groups but I'd never before worked specifically with a chamber choir. I saw the position advertised and thought it'd be really nice to go back to my own choral singing roots. I studied at Nottingham. I was a choral scholar there and I've been singing since the age of 11.”

Penny is now enjoying the challenge of Horsham: “It is always a learning curve and it is always a steep learning curve. You get a sense of the group when you audition but is not really until you are working with them week in, week out that you really start to get to know them. I've been nearly three years with Carshalton Choral Society and I'm still learning new things about them. I'd say it takes at least a year to really get to know a group and then there is still more to discover. I would say that the first year is definitely primarily a learning game but Horsham have responded very admirably to the music that I have put in from to them. I've held nothing back at all. It is always important for a choir to be challenging themselves in what they do and so I've been working on new as well as familiar repertoire with them.

“They are a well-oiled machine, I would say. I have come in and the sound that they produce is really beautiful. There is certainly lots of work that I don't need to be doing with them. The sound is beautiful and beautifully in tune and they are working together. They have sung with each other for a long time and they listen to each other.

“But always there are different challenges coming into a well-established group as a new person and finding your own way to work with them. There is the age-old challenge which is the case with every group of ‘Are you watching?’ That's certainly not unique to Horsham and you especially get it with pieces that are well known when it's very easy to do things the way that they have always been done but everyone needs to watch. It's the perennial conductor’s cry – the battle cry of all conductors!

“It is good that they are so responsive to each other but the conductor's life is always about trying to get people to watch. But we are in a very early phase of getting to know each other. We are rehearsing some new things so it's very easy for heads to go down and to be looking at the music. It's for me to get them to lift up their music and to lift up their heads!

“In the first year it is all about getting to know each other and building relationships with the singers and with the group and with the committee and just really building trust. It is also about making friendships. It is not just a job for me. Working with different choirs is my life and my community, and that's why it's so important to build the trust and the relationships together.

“We've got a number of concerts coming up with different themes and it's very important for them to have ownership of what they are doing as a group. If there are pieces that get suggested by lots of people then you know that they will probably go down well. We are also wanting to build up our audiences. I don't really know much about what went before but I know that the choir are keen to build up larger attendances.”

And also perhaps more singers.

“Horsham has about 30-odd singers and if you make it too much bigger then you are in danger of not being a chamber choir but we would certainly like a few more people and certainly tenors are always welcome. It is a very welcoming group.”