ABBA

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Great music is always great music. We’re sure that Mozart, Handel and Vivaldi would have delighted in ABBA’s melodies. They were, after all, writing the “pop music” of their time.

So in the tradition of The Self-Isolation Choir’s learning, recording and performing GREAT music, we offer a short course to learn, record and perform the wonderful music of ABBA with SATB choral arrangements by our new Choral Director: Ralph Allwood MBE.

Songs

We shall learn the following songs in SATB arrangements for a 4 voice-part choir:

THANK YOU FOR THE MUSIC

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DANCING QUEEN

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SUPER TROUPER

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MAMMA MIA

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SOS

Ralph Allwood MBE DMus was for 26 years Director of Music at Eton College and is now a freelance choral director. He is the Director of the Eton Choral Courses, which he founded in 1980. Seven thousand 16 to 20 year olds have been students on courses over the last thirty-seven years. He co-founded the Junior Choral Courses in 2012, and in recent years has launched Courses in Shanghai and Shenzhen. The Rodolfus Choir www.therodolfusfoundation.org.uk is made up of the best singers from the courses, has produced over 20 CDs since he founded it in 1982.

Ralph is co-founder and conductor of Inner Voices, a choir made up of singers from state schools in London. He is also Director of Chapel Music at Queens’ College Chapel, Cambridge, and Director of the only conservatoire chapel choir in the world, the Old Royal Naval College Trinity Laban Chapel Choir. He is also an Honorary Fellow of University College, Durham.

Ralph has conducted choirs for 40 live broadcasts for BBC Radio 3, is a judge for the Llangollen Eisteddfod and has written much music heard worldwide on radio and television. He is Choral Advisor to Novello and to Trinity College, Oxford, and teaches at Trinity Laban Conservatoire and at his old school, Tiffin.

In 2012 Ralph was awarded a Doctorate of Music by Aberdeen University. He was made MBE in the 2012 New Year's Honours list. In 2017, the Archbishop of Canterbury presented him with the Thomas Cranmer Award for Music and Worship.

How it Will Work

Ralph and Lora Sansun have arranged these 5 ABBA pieces for 4 separate SATB voices and Ralph will teach each song LIVE with online rehearsals for each voice with a piano backing track played by Richard Gowers. Richard is well known to The Self-Isolation Choir having played piano/organ for us on Vivaldi’s Gloria, Rossini’s Petite Messe Solonnelle and Mendelssohn’s Elijah. To assist our learning, we have asked Ralph’s choir, The Rodolfus Choir, to sing each part in isolation so that your voice part can be LOUDER than the others.

We shall then ask for recordings of your own voice using your equipment at home, which we shall combine with all other voices in the studio to create the complete choir. Finally, we shall play this back to the choir in a special online Concert Premiere.

Timings & Course Fee

The course starts on 11th January 2021 with a meeting of the Full Choir online.

We then learn the songs and voice recordings will open on 31st January and close on 21st February.

The Concert Premiere will be on Saturday 13th March at 19:00 UK time.

The course fee is £45 which includes:

Ralph’s tuition

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Full scores with copyright clearance

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Backing tracks recorded by the Rodolfus Choir

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Mixing all voices in the studio

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Concert Premiere

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Montage picture of the choir

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A bespoke collage featuring the whole choir

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MP3 files of the final mixed SIC tracks for you to keep

Please note: The Self-Isolation Choir has been careful to ensure there are minimal rehearsal clashes in 2021, however rehearsal and course times are subject to change.