Bit niche...any year 9-11 chorister parents?

[Xennialish]

Hi, hoping someone can give me some insight on to how this works at other schools/cathedrals. My child’s school has just started the option of being able to carry on as a chorister (termed choral scholar) at her school. However, I am unsure that this would work at the current service schedule with GCSEs and generally increased academic requirements. Would you expect a experienced chorister to be able to sing at the same services as the year 4 to 8 children in the choir with a reduced rehearsal schedule? Or in your experience at cathedrals with older choristers would there then normally be two choirs anyway so fewer services/rehearsals for both? It might be a unique mixed age 8-16 choir (recruitment dire )! Also has anyone received any funding from the CSA for being a chorister past 13?

Mine left at the end of Y9 (started in Y3) and it was the right time to get on with something else (Saturday junior conservatoire) and GCSEs. Depends on the work load I suppose but in my experience they certainly needed something to fill the gap left by choir.

Hi Xennialish

DS2 is in Y10 now.

He sings one evening a week in Youth Choir. Our Cathedral does boys 2 evenings a week, girls 2 nights a week and Youth Choir one night a week. Youth Choir also sings some Sunday services and occasionally some special services, they are singing Midnight Eucharist on Christmas Eve this year.

Youth Choir members don't get pocket money or bursaries like the Choristers do, they get taken our for pizza at the end of every term!

DS also volunteers as a Junior Choral Scholar. Our new Director of Music has limited the amount of services he can sing at, it is currently only Sunday mornings. I would expect them to need less rehearsal time than the younger Choristers, the JCS have the Lay Clerk rehearsal times for shared services.

Additionally he occasionally is asked to fill in on the back row as an alto or tenor at other services, for this he receives a small fee.

Because its not as formal as his Choristership, he fits it round other things he wants to do (and things he doesn't like practice and homework!)

One choir that seems to have the huge age range you describe is the girls' choir at St Catherine's in Cambridge. Advice from someone from there might be helpful...?

Thank you everyone, I think there may be as many arrangements as cathedrals!

I am thinking that maybe the passion that she feels for choral music at the moment, two years in, might fade a little and that a couple of services a week at most will suffice in the future. It just seems a little unfair to bring the very experienced choristers (who would normally have left) to every rehearsal which is what is happening at the moment in the system's first year.

St Catherine's Choir looks lovely and does indeed have the same proposed age range but the schedule is much less than DD's - her's is punishing (to me, not her!).

In DS2's choir the choristers (boys between years 5 and 8) rehearse twice a day six days a week - 3 hours in total: once on their own and once with the men. So the men (a mix of students and professionals), rehearse about half the amount of time. The men are expected to be able to pick up the music faster.

Thank you, that sounds similar to the current arrangement. I have just found out that the post year 8 choristers won’t do lunchtime rehearsals so it could be doable if the finances get sorted.

Did has just retired as head chorister of an 11-18 girls choir. She’s loved it all through. They push the leadership side as you Get older. Solos as well as a kind of pastoral role eg getting the 11yr olds from her school confident in getting the bus etc.

Dd now has a proper choral scholarship at uni.