Jane Edwardson: Full Interview

TRANSCRIPT

Jane Edwardson
Interviewed by Deirdre Quill
20th May 2015

JE: I am Jane Edwardson and its Wednesday 20th May 2015 and I’m being interviewed because I’m the Director of Gay Abandon choir based in Leeds and I set it up in 1997.

Well, I had just moved to Leeds. I was a music student at the College of Music and I felt it was quite a difficult place to establish myself as a new arrival in the city. I didn’t know where to meet people; I didn’t know how to make friends, but I knew and I know from my own experiences that the times I felt I belong in a place is when I’m a member of a choir; and I thought ‘that’s what I need to do; I need to be in a mixed gay choir’ is how I viewed it at that time, but there wasn’t one. In fact there wasn’t one north of Birmingham.

So I started talking to my hairdresser, Jason, [laughs] at Cutting Camp, and Harvey; that’s where I first spoke about this. They were very encouraging and Jason had lots of friends and he told me about David Burnett. I had met him before when I was conductor of the Lavender Café Orchestra and he once came and played the piano for us at a gig in Saltaire. So I knew who Jason was talking about.

David is a very experienced choral leader and accompanist and Jason put me in touch with David, and… [pause]… In fact, he didn’t. He told me about David and I bumped into David in Somerfield in Headingly [laughs] at the check-out and said ‘would you like to set up a choir?’ and he said ‘Yes’. So from these early beginnings we started to meet and talk about what kind of a choir had I got in mind and always David was saying ’it’s your choir, I’m here to support you but it is your choir, what do you want it to be like?’ and through the summer of 1997 I started to consider what sort of choir I’d like and I decided I didn’t want a gay-friendly choir I wanted a mixed gay choir and… This was a year after Labour got in so it was an exciting time for us politically; change was on the horizon and … do you want to know anything about my memories of what it was like socially in Leeds at that time?

DQ: Uh-ha.

JE: As a new person to Leeds I found out that lesbians met once a week in a pub on North Street and on a Wednesday evening I had to find, stir up as much courage as I possibly could and walk into this pub and look around at these tables with women sat round, largely not talking to each other, it seemed; groups not integrating and stand there and feel really … where am I going to sit? Who am I going to talk to? One week somebody, who has become a very close friend who I’d not met before, smiled broadly at me and that made me feel so much more welcome. So it wasn’t an easy time moving to Leeds at that point.

DQ: So tell me more about Cutting Camp, the hairdressers.

JE: Well it was in, as I recall, downstairs, maybe a shop front, in Hyde Park. And it wasn’t very salubrious and I walked in the first time to get my hair cut and Jason was doing a kind of fandango and clapping and [laughs] dancing around behind me and Harvey was singing. And this was my first experience of going to Cutting Camp. And Jason did a great haircut and I still have that style today although I have added hair products in the last few years. But that’s beside the point [laughs].

The best things about running Gay Abandon, or a gay choir in Leeds is, well, I think it’s the camaraderie, I think it’s the friendships, I think it’s the mutual support that we give and get from being part of a big organisation which has a long history. Some of us have been in the choir right from the beginning and we know each other really well. And I think that’s one of the best things about it. Another really good thing about it is the singing. Singing brings people together. There’s so much research out there about how important singing is for us and I think if you asked any member of Gay Abandon they’d say that if you come along feeling stressed and anxious or lonely or isolated on a Tuesday night by the end of the session you’re feeling much more positive and that you’ve got something valuable to give and that you’ve got some support from the people around you. I think that is really important.

So when we first set up in Leeds we were the only Northern mixed gay choir in the country. The nearest was based in Birmingham, and it’s still thriving there as well: Rainbow Voices. And then there were choirs in London: Pink Singers, London Gay Men’s Chorus and I’d also heard a choir which is no longer in existence called Queer Choir at London Pride one year. But once we got established as a choir a member of our choir called Henry, he spotted that there were two different international mixed gay choir - sorry, let’s say LGBT choir – festivals and organisations, one based in America called GALA and one in Europe called Various Voices and he got us signed up to both of those organisations and this opened our horizons to the fact that there are choirs all over the world really and Gay Abandon went off to Berlin in, I think it was, 1999….2001, something like that, and we took part in our first international gay choirs, LGBT choirs, festival.

We were dreadful, absolutely dreadful! We were only a couple of years old; we were so inexperienced at performing at that point. But we were so warmly received by the European LGBT choirs network and I’ve seen that happen many times since as new and emerging choirs take to the stage in various European cities for the first time as part of Various Voices, and nervously cower in the middle of a stage in front of 2000 people, and perform to the very best that they can and how over the years these choirs, like Gay Abandon, grow in confidence and in musicality and, in later years, start to produce amazing performances that thrill singers from around the world. So I’m very proud that Gay Abandon is part of that.

So Gay Abandon, it’s… When I first set it up I didn’t really have much experience, apart from Jason and Harvey, of spending time with gay men and suddenly we had a lot of men in the choir and… who I didn’t know and, well, I didn’t know a lot of the women either, so we had a lot of time getting to know each other. Back in those days some of the lesbians in the choir, they also didn’t know how to be around gay men. In fact I remember we had a party as Frances’ house and she said: ‘I haven’t had a man in the house for 15 years since somebody came to mend the roof’ and so this is kind of a bit like what it was like. We were two different groups of people who didn’t know how to be in the same room together but bringing us together through song did also bring us together as friends and over the years I think we’ve become very, very close and it’s been a really valuable place for me to form friendships with men as well as women so from a very funny opening time…

Shall I tell you a funny story? One of the first things... It’s a bit rude though… [laughs]

We were sat in Blayds Bar having our first rehearsal. The tenors and basses were on the back row, women were on the front row. There were only probably about 15, maybe 20 people there. I was working on a bit of music with the women singers and I said to the men: ‘If you want to slip your part in now, you can’ [laughter] and anyway I’m still concentrating on teaching the music and the men are kind of corpsing and falling off their chairs laughing, trying not to laugh loudly, and snorting and hysterics. Gradually the women realised what I’d said and they started laughing too and I’m stood at the front still going ‘What? What are you laughing at?’ [laughs]

So Gay abandon had its first rehearsal in September 1997 and I didn’t know where to hold it, or whether to go and hire a hall somewhere or what, so I asked Jason’s advice at Cutting Camp and he said: ‘What about Blayds Bar? They have a function room upstairs’. I remember him telling me this so I went down and spoke to Blayds and they said ‘yes we’d be really welcome’ to use their bar and I don’t think we had to pay anything I think; they welcomed us with opened arms actually. Upstairs they have a little function area and that’s where we set up home for the first couple of years before we grew too big really to be able to fit in comfortably to their space any more. And it was lovely because we were able to socialise there. It wasn’t just about singing space. There was a bar downstairs and in the break time - choirs usually have a break - Gay Abandon’s break involved going down stairs and getting a drink so people would have a nice pint of bitter or a nice little chat in the middle of the rehearsal and I’d be saying ’shall we go back and sing?’ Actually I was quite shy then and a bit unassertive: ‘ Hello, anybody like to sing?’ ‘Oh, yeah, We’ll be there in a minute Jane; anybody want another drink?’ and we had to have an agreement that alcohol was consumed after the rehearsal. It was an important place for us, Blayds, and happy memories of those early days.

DQ: And where was Blayds?

JE: Lower Briggate.

When Gay Abandon first performed, in fact during the first year; I’ve already mentioned Henry and how interested he was in getting us linked up to GALA in America and Various Voices in Europe; well he was very interested in German culture and he discovered that our twin city, Dortmund, in Germany also has an LGBT choir called Sang Und Clang Los. And we set up through Henry a really lasting, enduring and important relationship between the two choirs. They’ve been to visit Leeds a couple of times and the first time they came we sang in Dortmund Square in town and took them to see that wonderful edifice - sorry I shouldn’t have said that: [laughs] it’s a bit dull isn’t it really - So we sang in Dortmund Square and encouraged passersby on a Saturday afternoon to come and join us for a concert that evening. We met with the Mayor at the town hall, no it wasn’t the town hall, the Civic Hall and we had a great concert at the, forget where…. University….does it matter?

DQ: No.

JE: That was our first experience of performing with the Dortmund choir. Then a few years later we, as a choir, went to Dortmund and they made us so welcome. It was just the most fantastic trip right from the moment we arrived at the airport and were met and taken into the city and we met up in a lovely café bar and had a party and they fed us and then the next day - well it was jam packed - we didn’t have a moment’s rest really. We started with a tour of the town hall and then we had a rehearsal in the venue where we were going to perform that night. We had dinner in the evening; we had a tour around the German Market which of course it isn’t called ‘The German Market’ there but that’s what it was, it was like we have here in Millennium Square but massive, it was huge, and… because we went, incidentally, at Christmas time.

And we had… The concert was amazing. We performed together on this little stage. Dortmund sang first, then we sang, then we all sang together, and then I remember us leaving the stage and going backstage and being handed glasses of champagne to celebrate our wonderful performance, and eventually the doors opened - it must have been five minutes later, we were standing there having this drink together, mixing the two choirs up, everybody hugging and congratulating each other the way that you do post-concert - and the doors opened into the auditorium very briefly and there was this thunderous sound. I couldn’t understand where it was coming from and what it was was the audience stamping their feet because they wanted more. And so for five minutes they’d been stamping their feet waiting for us to come back out again. So then we all went back out again onto the stage, performed another two songs together; again the most amazing warm response from the audience and it’s a special time, a special memory, for the choir, I think, and Dortmund have since been back to join us in our concert hall that we usually perform in, which is The Venue at Leeds College of Music. And it was a wonderful time and it was one of the last times that Henry performed with us and he sang a solo with some of their members called Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. What a way to go out Henry!

So Gay Abandon members don’t have to audition and this is so that we can encourage people to join really. I think that the idea that you have to stand up and sing in front of someone would scare a lot of people off. We’re not that kind of choir. I work with community choirs; I’m a community musician at heart and I want to welcome as many people into the choir as possible. Some people join and have fantastic voices and lots and lots of experience of singing with other choirs and their contribution is so important in supporting other members who join who maybe haven’t sung since they were at school and there are certainly a lot of members coming to Gay Abandon who were told at school that they can’t sing and yet they bravely come along to Gay Abandon and are supported into the choir and over the years contribute so much to the overall sound of the choir and that is so important I think. I would hate to think that all those lovely people that have joined the choir over the years but wouldn’t be able to join another choir but they were able to be part of Gay Abandon - and I were to be part of Gay Abandon - and together we produce a lovely sound and together we have our community and that’s what it’s about. Community music for me is about that: bringing people together through music and I don’t want to exclude anyone. Occasionally we do find that some people join who need a little bit more support with finding their voices, and we endeavour to give them that support. Singers support each other and I’ll give extra little sessions with people outside of main choir rehearsal in order to include as many people as possible.

So we’ve had lots of memorable concerts over the years, but the concerts that I particularly remember with affection was when we started to do… to have an idea that we were, that we’d have a theme and the first time I remember us really doing that was LGBT history month when we were lucky enough to get a grant from the Millennium Lotteries to put on a performance of songs that we felt represented the LGBT community. And we took that show on tour, if you like. We went into prisons, which was a fantastic experience for us a choir as well as for the prisoners that we entertained. I do remember some of the women getting very excited about our men. I did have to point out they‘re actually gay [laughs]. So that was very funny. It was a really nice experience doing that. I’m glad we did that. I’d like to do it again.

And then the next theme we did was Big Hair Do, Gay Abandon’s Big Hair Do, and we took that show to London as part of Various Voices and sang in the South Bank Centre in the Queen Elizabeth’s Hall which was one of our pinnacle performances and we were very, very well received. I think that’s our first standing ovation at Various Voices. Incidentally choirs coming along for the very first time very warmly received: standing ovation; very good performances: standing ovation; mediocre: no standing ovation, so it’s always a bit of a relief when people stand up in the audience. Thank goodness for that. Anyway that was London and we repeated that performance in Leeds at The Venue.

Last year we went to Dublin with our theme of Gay Abandon Movies set and thank goodness: standing ovation. We repeated that in Leeds along with Idols and Icons and that, I think, was a lovely set of music where we chose songs that represent our community. And the choir sang really, really well and visually we looked great and so that was a memorable experience as well for me.

So, back in Berlin, going back to our very first international appearance on stage was the first time we attempted movement on stage. Well, I do recall there being bright red feather dusters as our props but we were so inexperienced at that point that we couldn’t remember how to use them so we had to have two members of choir standing in front [laughs] with their red feather dusters – in performance this is -showing the rest of the choir what to do with their red feather dusters. Well the audience were gobsmacked. They were silent actually. There wasn’t any laughing. They just didn’t know what to make of us. And in fact that was the concert where three members were delayed on a plane and they arrived in the middle of the concert and [laughs] we were on the stage performing and they came in up the steps at the back of the auditorium and I saw them waving their feather dusters and I said ‘Oh! The people who couldn’t get here have arrived’ and they ran down the aisle waving their red feather dusters onto the stage. By this point the audience were wondering ‘what is this surreal thing that is happening in front of us?’ [laughs]. That was our first brush with movement and over the years we’ve had [laughter]various attempts at dazzling our audiences with our slick choreography, if we can call it that. So I remember the Big Hair Do preparations that involved Addie, who was one of our choreographers, standing in front of the choir shouting out ‘Turn! Turn! Turn! Turn!’ to try and get us to remember how to do it, but actually we’re coming on great now because our choreographic leaders - if I can call them that - Catherine and Andrea, went on a course, a training course, in choral movement when they were in Dublin when we were at the festival there and the dance moves that we do now are so lovely and manageable that we’ve stopped feeling anxious and started enjoying what we’re doing. Does that sound really negative about all the other people who have done it in the past?

DQ: No.

JE: You know, Addie and the feather dusters. [laughs]

I love choral arranging. It’s something I first started to do when I was in Sheffield with the Sheffield Socialist Choir. We didn’t have much music then to sing. There wasn’t the amazing network of community choirs that we have now. There weren’t many community choirs out there and I came across a song, a Billy Bragg song, There Is Power in the Union – this is dating us isn’t it? - and I arranged it for Sheffield Socialist Choir to sing. I didn’t really know I could arrange I did it because we didn’t have music, as I say. I realised this is something I can do and the choir was very encouraging and they wanted me to do more arrangements and I started to develop this skill and then came to Leeds to study at the College of Music where I learnt more about arranging. That was more about instrumental arranging really than choral and after I left the college and set up Gay Abandon, I saw this as an opportunity to find songs that the choir wanted to sing and start to arrange them.

So over the years I don’t know how many songs I’ve arranged for Gay Abandon. Lots. Lots and lots. And in those early days, a lot us when we start choral arranging we’re a bit clumsy and my choral arrangements were clumsy back in the, you know, 19 years ago. Over the years I’ve strived to write arrangements that are easily learnt, and memorable, and fun to sing and also that audiences will enjoy listening to. I think I’ve developed my own style over the years as well. Gay Abandon has always been the most generous of groups in allowing me to experiment really with the choir and have always been very warm in their feedback of my arrangements and this has encouraged me to try more and do more and more of it. So it’s a lovely activity that I enjoy doing; it’s like a creative world that I enter when I’m arranging something; I’m singing the song all the time without even realising it, so much so that my partner starts singing it too; and people on the street start singing it as I’m singing it when I walk the dog, etc. etc. I love that creative world and it allows Gay Abandon, more importantly, to come up with very individual programmes that reflect what the choir is wanting to sing about. And reflects the personality of the choir.

So Gay Abandon recently went through a process of working out whether the choir should welcome transgendered people to come and sing with us. This was a challenging time for the choir. Some members were unsure about what does this mean so there was a lot of reading up and talking about what do we want our choir to do in Leeds in terms of welcoming transgendered people to sing with us and I think it was a really valuable experience for the choir to do that. I think it could have led to difficulties but because we’re a very mature choir, because we know each other so well, because we respect each other, we were able to negotiate our way through this and the outcome, I’m very pleased to say, is that the choir voted to welcome transgendered members into the choir.

So our first performance was in June, I think. It was a lovely sunny day and we performed at the Clothworkers Hall at the university, which is a really nice concert space. I think the auditorium, or the fire limit, of how big an audience you can have is 200, or it was then, plus choir. Anyway, we far, far exceeded that. We got in a bit of a muddle with our ticket sales probably, it’s safe to say. So fire exits were blocked with people sitting on chairs. Chairs were brought in from goodness knows where and the place was crammed full of people. And our very first song was Way Over Yonder. It was a lovely arrangement by Pete Churchill and it starts with everybody singing in what we call unison, where we’re all singing the same notes at the same time and it draws the audience into this idea that there’s a place there for us where we can be safe, a place of hope, and then the song breaks out into harmony, and it’s got a very stirring end, I think there was even a modulation, which is a key change, and we got to the end of the song and the audience started applauding and it continued to applaud and applaud and applaud. It was like the sort of applause you’d expect at the end of a concert when people are taking bows and everything and it just went on and on - that’s my memory anyway - and the audience were going ’Yeah they can really sing this lot’. And a choir was born and we’ve loved showing off ever since.

When I set up the choir I was - I’m still not very good at organisational stuff, admin stuff. So after a while of blundering about, well me blundering about, a few volunteers got together as a kind of – we didn’t really call it a committee at that stage- sort of volunteers who were guiding us along. Then they became a committee and the choir started to establish itself organisationally. As far as the community’s concerned, and it is a community, I feel that although my role… my role with the choir has always been about developing our musicality, so teaching songs, teaching people to listen to each other, blend their voices, building us towards performance really. That’s my responsibility. But I’m really chuffed to say that the choir has developed its own personality and its own community itself. I didn’t influence that. I stepped back and allowed that to happen and what a lovely community it is.

END