Choir Leader Callout

Newhaven Community Choir are looking for someone who is passionate about community, heritage and singing to guide our weekly singing sessions and occasional performances.

The Choir Leader guides our weekly singing sessions by helping to create a positive and encouraging community atmosphere for people to sing together. Weekly sessions include a physical and vocal warmup, going over songs from our extensive back catalogue, trying out new songs, preparing for performances and checking in with how everyone’s week has been. The leader may sometimes lead these parts of sessions themselves but they also encourage choir members to take on leading different parts as well. The emphasis is more on community than on music and the leader doesn’t need to worry about preparing written scores or arrangements unless useful for specific pieces. Choir members often just sing whatever harmonies and parts they feel like without much prior planning or arranging.

At performances the leader is often the person who addresses the audience and helps to encourage people to join the choir, so someone who is a confident public performer/ speaker would be good.

No experience at leading choirs or musical qualifications are necessary. It is much more important for us to have a leader who can support a positive community atmosphere.

The roots of the choir are in folk music, especially music from or about the East Coast of Scotland, so a leader with an interest in this would be ideal.

It is also helpful if the leader is able to play an accompanying instrument such as guitar, ukulele or keyboard.

The choir leader will need to work with choir members to help facilitate group decisions about repertoire, performances and the general direction of the choir so someone with experience in supporting group decision making would be good too.

The role has huge potential to be developed further by someone who has the skills and desire to write funding applications for projects that help the choir engage in community work. There are many ideas within the choir membership for productions and performances that could be developed.

Pay offered:

This is a freelance position.
Fixed fee of £61 for each weekly session (90mins)
Any additional work with the group will be paid at a rate of £40.50/hr.
Any additional meetings, admin or preparation work will be paid at £12/hr.

Dates:
We are looking to have someone in place to start next term from Wednesday 28th August 2024.

If you are interested in the role please email newhavencommunitychoir@gmail.com

The deadline is Monday 15 July 2024 at 12:00.