Birmingham choir founder Clare Edwards scoops national award
Dorothy Wilson, Chair of Making Music, presented Clare Edwards with the organisation’s Lady Hilary Groves Prize for 2017 at a concert this Saturday. Awarded to one individual in the UK each year, the Prize is presented for outstanding contribution to music in the community.
In 1997, Clare (newly returned from studying music at Sheffield University) decided to found a new kind of choir, specifically aimed at reaching the busy, working twenty-something professionals often missing from choral societies.
20 years later, under her baton the choir – notorious – has performed more than 120 concerts in 65 different venues with programmes blending contemporary and classical repertoire (including pairing Mozart with Freddie Mercury) in venues as varied as a coffin factory (on Halloween), a cave (with the audience on barges), and a local tip (joining with the Bishop of Birmingham to promote reducing waste at Christmas).
Making Music, the UK’s organisation for leisure-time music making, chose Clare from a large number of nominees put forward by its member groups across the country.
