Male Voice Choir
Formed in 1948 as an educational based music appreciation group giving officers serving under the much harsher service conditions of the day a chance to have a few precious hours away from their beats, the choir has changed much over the years. Like most choirs, the ever increasing range of leisure activities, and the change in musical tastes, has seen membership problems over the years which have had a great effect on the choir's formation. With membership now being open to "anyone of good standing", roughly half of the choir you see today have no direct ties to the police service. However, unlike many other groups, the choir's main reason for existence has also changed somewhat over the years. While it still provides much enjoyment to the members, there can be few arguments that the main reason that the choir continues to exist with it's links to the police force, is the immense public relations benefit that the force itself gains, with the choir demonstrating the caring side of the police service as it tours the region helping local charities and groups raise many thousands of pounds a year towards their good causes.
Over recent years the demand for the choir's services has rocketed, and even though we have doubled the number of concerts, performing around 20 a year, we are in the pleasing position that we make bookings about a year in advance, with only a couple of free dates towards the end of the year, and with our diary for 2006 already beginning to take shape. In addition to these local concerts, the choir has found time to appear in such venues as The Royal Albert Hall, Hull City Hall, the De Montfort Hall, Leicester, Birmingham Symphony Hall, and Sledmere Hall near Driffield. However, perhaps the most noteworthy concert of recent years was also a local one, namely the St. Nicholas' Day Concert in Durham Cathedral at the end of 2002 which raised some £10,000 for local cancer care charities, while we have also appeared in Durham's Gala Theatre in a concert to raise funds for The Army Benevolent Fund. On a very local note for ourselves, the Durham Constabulary Christmas Charity Concerts held at Police Headquarters, and featuring the choir along with the Durham Constabulary Band now regularly raises over £2,000 for local charities.
For its Golden Jubilee, the choir made its first ever recording. This proved so popular we have decided to make another one, and hope that this will be available sometime during the next year.
The choir is always looking for suitable new members, and potential recruits are always welcome to visit our rehearsals which are held in this hall every Tuesday evening at 7pm (except during July and the first two weeks in August).
If you feel the choir could help your charity / good cause to raise funds, please do not hesitate to contact the secretary, whose details are shown on the contacts page. The choir will, normally, be only too pleased to help you, but please be aware that we do not, generally, perform concerts during the summer months, i.e. May, June, July, and August, and also note that we are required to charge for our services, to allow us to maintain the funds that we require to keep the choir solvent. However, in recognition to the fact that concert organisers are trying to raise money themselves, we do try to keep these costs to a minimum, those for 2006 / 2007 being set at £90 per concert.
The choir operates a mailing list to advise "friends" of major events, and to facilitate booking for the concerts held here at Police Headquarters, if you would like to be included, please contact the secretary. Please note that the choir does not normally act as ticket agent for concerts away from Police Headquarters, tickets for which can be obtained from the organisers.
