Scotland Sings announced its new Chorus Awards in 2015. The aim of these awards is to showcase the outstanding practice and great things going on in Scotland’s choirs and to celebrate and honour the people who are promoting singing together. The awards are not about how well you sing or perform and they are open to any kind of choir, chorus or group of singers singing in any style, at any level.
Congratulations to Timebank Temptations who won the Original Music Award category. We asked them the following questions.
Tell us more about yourself / the choir
We are the Timebank Temptations, we grew out of North Edinburgh Timebank which is a project based in Muirhouse which encourages reciprocal volunteering and community participation. We get together every Thursday morning to sing, write songs and recently, to learn the ukulele! We believe that not only does singing do us good, but we give lots of joy back to the community when we perform at various events. We are a bunch of people with no experience of singing, but thanks to the expertise of our choir leader Val Munro, we’re all able to sing loads of different songs.
How long have you been singing / has the choir been singing together?
We’e been together since 2012. Originally, a group of Timebank members got together to sing the song ‘Lean on Me’ for the launch of North Edinburgh Timebank – we thought the song summed up what we and the timebank were all about. We enjoyed it so much we wanted to keep going! We’ve done things the hard way – we started performing a cappella with no professional instruction! Now we have our great choir leader Val Munro. We’re an open group, we welcome anybody to come and sing with us on Thursday mornings. Over the years we’ve had about 40 people involved. We’re a good group, we support each other and we’ve made lots of friends.
What have you/has the choir got planned in the next 12 months?
Well, we’re just getting over the whirlwind of the last 12 months! We wrote a song with singer songwriter Kim Edgar and performed it for the opening of the Gardener’s Cottage at the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, And we hope to do more ukulele lessons too. We’d like to do an exchange with another choir somewhere else in the country, to share songs and learn form each other.
What has been the highlight of your / the choir’s singing journey?
SO many! We’ve sung in the City Chambers, we participated in the Big Big SIng events, and to raise money for Water Aid. And we were selected by Spirit of 2012 Trust which covers the whoel of Uk and Republic of Ireland as the voluntary arts group that best represents and Epic Place, because of our connection with the community. We were able to work with Voluntary Arts Scotland through this, which has been great. Writing songs with local singer songwriters Penny Stone and Kim Edgar has been great, and performing our own song at the opening of the Gardener’s Cottage at Royal Botanical Gardens Edinburgh was great.
What got you singing in the first place / why did the choir first start singing together?
Being members of North Edinburgh Timebank got us involved. It’s a way of getting folk involved in their community, helping each other our and it’s based on the belief that everyone has something to offer their community and that everyone should have an opportunity to participate. We were organising the official launch, and to sum up what we’re all about we thought we’d sing the song Lean On Me. We had no professional input – we basically taught ourselves, without musicians or anything! But we did it, people loved it, and so did we so we wanted to keep it going! Fortunately we found Val Munro, who sits on the board of our local art centre, North Edinburgh Arts, where the choir meets. She came on board, first as a volunteer, then we got funding to pay her. Her experience, expertise and talent has been key in our development.
How does it feel to be the first winner of the award?
Amazing, we’re so chuffed! We’ve always written songs as part of the group, and we perform a song one of our members wrote, who sadly died. Working with experienced song writers like Penny Stone and Kim Edgar – and our own choir lead Val Munro! Has been exciting. When we started none of us though we could sing, never mind write our own songs! It’s brilliant being recognised for this and we hope it encourages everyone to get involved in a singing group, and find out where it leads them!
What styles of singing do you / the choir enjoy most?
That’s difficult! We sing songs from Africa, which are great to do, but it’s nice to do some pop songs, and songs from musicals like Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious. Depends on our mood. It’s great learning lots of different styles, and doing mash ups.
Read more about Timebank Temptations at their website
http://facebook.com/timebanktemptions
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