Milton Keynes Community Choir was founded in 2008 and has expanded rapidly to form a large choir with over 100 members. Providing space allows, the choir is open to all and there are no auditions. The choir’s repertoire is wide and varied, encompassing modern, contemporary, classical, gospel, soul, folk and World music. As a community choir, we aim to sing for fun, to make friends and very importantly to raise funds for charities with the accent being on ‘Community’ as many of the charities have been local ones, such as MK Hospital and the children’s charity ‘Keech Hospice Care’.
We have presented Christmas concerts and invited other choirs to join us at summer festivals. We have run workshops with guest leaders, participated in the local, national and international choir festivals and raised funds for emergency disaster appeals. We have also been invited to perform at mayoral inaugurations and other celebratory events.
We are also proud to have been invited to perform at several prestigious events, such as:
- The Rugby World Cup before the Japan vs Samoa match in 2015;
- World Premiere of Shout Out by David Lang;
- Voices now at the Roundhouse, London in 2015;
- The Barbican with the London Symphony Orchestra as part of ‘Symphonic Gospel Spirit’, a celebration of gospel music led by Dr Andre Thomas in 2020.
We were awarded first place in our class at the Milton Keynes Festival of the Arts in March 2020 and 2022.
When Covid-19 changed our lives in 2020, MKCC were one of the first choirs to hold our weekly rehearsals using Zoom and we were featured on ITV’s ‘Good Morning Britain’.
Undaunted by the pandemic, we continued to perform on Zoom with a 26-Melody Marathon in aid of several charities, jointly ran two concerts with the Big Yellow Choir for the charity ‘Electric Umbrella’ raising money for MK Disability Awareness, ‘Sing to Remember’ raising funds for The British Legion Poppy Appeal and a very successful Christmas concert for ‘St Mark’s Meals’, another local charity.
As Covid restrictions eased and the weather turned warmer, we gathered for our weekly rehearsals in smaller groups in a local underpass, with very good acoustics! It was wonderful to see and hear each other after so long on Zoom.
Led by our talented musical director, Craig McLeish we hosted a live festival as soon as Covid restrictions allowed in July 2021 in the open-air amphitheatre in Campbell Park, Milton Keynes, where we were joined by eight other choirs to provide an evening of live music, so long missed during lockdown. We repeated this very successful event in July 2022 and 2023.
