Edinburgh Festival Chorus in perfect harmony

The sun is beating down on the cobbles of the Lawnmarket but wary tourists are eyeing up the rain ponchos hanging outside shops. The sound of pipe music wafts on the air outside The Hub, a few people drink coffee and eat a late breakfast. It's an easy, sunny Saturday. The only hint that something else might be going on inside the building is the number of bikes chained to the railings. There are racers and mountain bikes, city bikes and tourers, all threaded to the fence like beads on a necklace.

Step inside the main performance space and the atmosphere couldn't be any more different to the mid-morning dawdling outside.

"You're late!" shouts Chorus Master Christopher Bell from a podium surrounded on three sides by the 130-odd singers who make up the Edinburgh Festival Chorus. They're working their way through John Adams's complex and demanding El Nino, a Nativity oratorio, which they will perform in the opening concert of this year's Edinburgh International Festival. It's one of four pieces that the Chorus will be singing, including Mahler's Third and Eighth Symphonies and Puccini's La fanciulla del West. It's no surprise that there's a palpable crackle of nervous energy.

"The basses are too loud and the altos are worried about something," says the Belfast-born Bell. The singers' faces are a model of concentration, pencils are plucked from behind ears to annotate scores, brows are furrowed.

Adams's piece is challenging to say the least; rhythmically unpredictable, "tonally awkward" is how one polite singer describes it, it would be demanding for any professional choir but the Edinburgh Festival Chorus isn't professional. Formed in 1965, they have performed with some of the best conductors in the world - Rattle, Abbado, Barenboim, Karajan, Solti, and the late and much missed Sir Charles Mackerras - but the singers who rehearse all year round, on Tuesday nights as well as over several weekends as the Festival approaches, are teachers, midwives, lawyers, students, men and women, young and older. They come from across Scotland - Aberdeen, Jedburgh, Glasgow as well as Edinburgh - and they use annual leave and precious spare time to sing in a choir that for many of them is much more than just a hobby.

If you're a Festival-goer you'll know the key role the Chorus plays in what remains the world's most prestigious arts festival. What you might not know, though, is the commitment and dedication it takes to participate, and also the huge rewards.

Malcolm and Susan Crosby - bass and alto - met just before Susan joined the Chorus in 1986. They were married in 1988. For the couple, the Chorus has been an integral part of their lives together. Now based just south of Biggar, Malcolm's job with the Forestry Commission has meant that they've moved around Scotland, but no matter where they've lived they've remained committed to the Chorus. "I could work anywhere in Scotland if I wanted to, but for me it has to be accessible to the Chorus," says Malcolm for whom this year marks his 30th year as a member.

In the early Eighties he lived in Kinlochrannach, yet even then he made it to rehearsals.

"I used to travel 90 miles each way," he says. "I had an arrangement with a tea room in Dunkeld that they would have my fish and chips ready at quarter to six every Tuesday. I used to dive in, eat and dive back out again. What it says about the Chorus is that it's worth making that effort."

A couple of hours into the rehearsal, cardies are coming off and sleeves are being rolled up. Eyes are glued to Bell who shouts out bar numbers in rapid succession, beating rhythms and singing as he goes. Pages flick and scribbles are made. The singers may not be professional but they do audition and they are expected to be able to sight read. They are also most definitely serious.

"It requires maximum concentration," says Judith Robertson, an alto who joined the Chorus in 2007. "There is no let up; there's nobody sitting there reading their newspaper behind their score. It's full-on, flat-out focus."

Robertson, the director of Oxfam in Scotland, is based in Glasgow and was a member of the RSNO Chorus for 15 years, during which time she first came across Bell.

"Christopher wants 100 per cent commitment. And to be honest, the demand that he makes is what keeps you going. Sometimes you think, och I can't face that journey along the M8 or it's pouring with rain or the traffic's desperate, all of which happens, but it becomes a habit. I look forward to my Tuesday evenings.

"There's an enormous intellectual challenge in being able to produce the music that we do. It's a completely different kind of challenge that I have every day at work. And also I'm part of a team, I'm responsible for what I sing but other than that it's a kind of collective responsibility. I love that."

Bell made no secret that he was very keen on the job of Chorus Master of the EFC and since he took over three years ago, the number of positive reviews has steadily increased as have the engagements the Chorus has been offered (not least an appearance at The Proms on 4 August). Driven and ambitious, Bell is fiercely loyal to the Chorus and they feel it.

Deborah Scott, 19, is studying medicine at Edinburgh University. Last year was her first Festival with the Chorus and this year will be her last, at least for a while, since her studies mean she'll be working as a junior doctor at Festival time. Scott says her experience has been "amazing". Partly it's been about being able to sing music of a calibre well beyond that of the school choir, partly it's been about performing to sold-out Festival audiences, but it's also about the act of singing.

"I play in orchestras but the Chorus feels different because you're using your voice so it feels more personal," says Scott.

Robertson agrees. "It's astonishingly rewarding," she says. "It's almost inexplicable why it's rewarding but part of it is the production of the sound, getting it right. And some of the music is just... I've cried in rehearsals, everybody sitting round me has cried in rehearsals. It's moving. It's incredibly passionate stuff."

The youngest member of the Chorus, 17-year-old Euan Williamson agrees. "Christopher goes through everything we're singing to make sure that we understand it," he says. "It's difficult not to get very involved in the music when you've got a conductor like him."

Back in The Hub and the temperature is rising. "We're not understanding 112," says Bell. "I could get it on time by giving it a flick but he might not do it." He's referring to the fact that when it comes to the Festival performances the Chorus will be conducted not by Bell but by one of the visiting conductors (this year James Conlon, Frances Corti, Mariss Jansons and Edinburgh-born Donald Runnicles, who sang as a chorister in the Chorus in 1965 in the very piece that this year he'll be conducting).

When the Chorus was founded, it was clear that its success would largely depend on the Chorus Master. What was needed was someone dynamic with huge musical ability. Arthur Oldham, a former musical director of Ballet Rambert and pupil of Benjamin Britten, was the man for the job. Since then, there have been two others, John Currie and David Jones, but it's Bell who seems to be closest to capturing that original spirit.

"Arthur was an eccentric," says Susan Crosby. "He was very, very interested in the Chorus, we were his Chorus. In fact, Arthur and Christopher are quite alike in some ways, in the sense that they have the interests of the Chorus at heart."

"I'm only the fourth Chorus Master in 45 years," says Bell. "I'm proud to be part of it. I have been passed the torch, I'm carrying it and I intend to pass it on to someone else and then look back on the work I did and be able to say I'm a good custodian of the legacy. I feel that responsibility."

Details of the Edinburgh Festival Chorus' concerts can be found at www.eif.co.uk The ladies of the Chorus will perform with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Donald Runnicles at The Proms on 4 August. The Chorus is looking for singers for its 2011 performances, email [email protected]

This article was first published in the Scotsman, July 31, 2010