The Choir at St Wulfram's
The choir at St Wulfram’s Church, Grantham, has a long and rich tradition. In recent years, it has flourished under the direction of Dr Tim Williams, and we are immensely proud of the choristers and all that they achieve.
The Trust is pleased to support the choir and its valuable work. In recent years, the choristers have sung services in some of the country’s most inspirational and prestigious venues, including St Paul’s Cathedral, St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, Salisbury Cathedral, Canterbury Cathedral, St David’s Cathedral and York Minster, receiving great acclaim. These achievements are in addition to their regular singing ministry here at St Wulfram’s.
The children’s choirs welcome boys and girls from the age of seven, with equal opportunities for training and participation. Choristers come from a wide range of backgrounds, and no audition is required to join. This ensures that the choir remains as inclusive and accessible as possible, allowing children and young people to benefit from the musical, educational and social opportunities that membership provides.
The Trust is particularly keen to support this commitment to inclusivity and diversity, ensuring that young people from all backgrounds can afford to participate fully in choir activities. Support might include funding vocal training events, or funding towards the choir residencies.
By supporting the choir in this way, the Trust can help ensure that its rich musical tradition continues to flourish while providing children and young people with opportunities to develop their confidence, skills and love of music, regardless of their financial or personal circumstances.
The Youth Choir
The Trust has supported the development of the highly successful mixed-voice youth choir through choral scholarships and funding for coaching sessions, encouraging young people to remain in the choir and develop their choral skills to a high level. The positive experience that the youngsters enjoy is reflected in their enthusiasm and the high retention of choristers into their teenage years, which is the basis of the Youth Choir. Unfortunately, as is seen so often in church choirs, the investment of time and effort training junior choir members is lost once they reach their teenage years and give up, which is sad for all concerned. We believe that we have something special here, with our Youth Choir.
This ensemble is currently 20-strong, featuring sopranos, altos, tenors and basses aged between 13 and 18.
The Youth Choir sings choral evensong on Fridays in term-time at 5.15pm. The members also sing with the full church choir in Sunday services.
The choir has sung in many recitals and concerts, and is a frequent guest choir at Harlaxton College. Highlights in recent memory have included a concert at Little St Mary’s Church Cambridge during the choir’s Ely 2022 residency, as well as the youth choir’s collaborations with the award-winning consort, the Gesualdo Six. In February 2023, the youth choir took a mini-tour, singing by invitation alongside Selwyn College Choir, Cambridge, and the next day singing Choral Evensong in the Lady Chapel at Ely Cathedral
The youth choir benefited significantly from its collaboration with the Gesualdo Six, work that the Trust has been pleased to support. Already a strong ensemble, the youth choir began by performing alongside members of the Gesualdo Six, who were then able to develop a more tailored approach to their coaching. This included a workshop exploring polyphony, which helped the young singers build confidence, deepen their musicianship and develop their understanding of ensemble singing.
A particularly valuable new technique for the youth choir was practising unconducted ensemble singing, encouraging the singers to listen more closely to one another and develop greater independence and cohesion as an ensemble.
A highlight of this collaboration was in February 2024 when the Gesualdo Six and the Youth Choir recorded choral evensong at St Wulfram's Church for BBC Radio 3. The trust was pleased to support the workshop prior to this service.
A recording of the Gesualo Six and the Youth Choir can be found here: