Cambridge is a very cerebral place where people spend a lot of time in their frontal cortex, as it were, but music can speak to your heart

Christopher Gray has joined St John’s as the new Director of Music, having led Truro Cathedral Choir and bringing it international acclaim. An exceptional musician, Chris tells us about climbing trees with the choristers, being on Britain's Got Talent and the secret to what makes The Choir of St John’s so magical.

You started at St John’s at the beginning of Easter Term, how did you break the ice with the boy and girl choristers?

I took them to Go Ape in Thetford Forest, where we got to know each other at height! Being children, they really need to get to trust the new person they will be spending so much time with. We rehearse every morning, apart from Monday, for an hour. Then they sing at six services a week, and there’s an additional hour of rehearsal before each of those. So it’s a lot of contact time and you have the opportunity to impact the lives of those 20 children and help with their development in ways that can be quite profound. Music is the focus of what they’re doing but in the process of releasing their musicianship you also develop their ability to analyse musical problems, and to have interesting questions about the text they’re singing. You give them the tools to apply those same skills elsewhere in their lives.

They say never work with children or animals. How do you get the choristers to sit still during services?

The choristers are ordinary children who do something extraordinary. They take such pride in what they do that they don’t need much to steer them back to acting in a nice, proper way if the halo slips.

What is so special about The Choir of St John’s?

The Choir know what they’re doing is part of a very important musical tradition, important not just to St John’s College or to Cambridge, but internationally. When I was studying at Pembroke, I would come here regularly to experience Evensong and to hear the Choir. There’s something uniquely wonderful and compelling about the soul of the Choir and the passion in the singing.

It helps that the Choir is made up of some of the best singers of their age that you’ll hear. The other thing about the Choir is there’s no ego, it’s all about trying to be as musical as possible and trying to blend. Vocal technique is always a means to an end. They are trying to delve into the meaning of the music and to express that, and to understand it so they can attach an emotion to each word or phrase they’re singing. As a listener, you just sit there and it will draw you in, you don't necessarily know why.

What I love about hearing the Choir is that it will be different for different people. I think it’s good to be connected to your emotions. This is Cambridge, it is a very cerebral place where people spend a lot of time in their frontal cortex, as it were, but music can speak to your heart.

What’s the secret to the sound?

There are different theories about where the particular St John’s magic originates, but I think part of it is the Chapel itself and the acoustics. And part of it is the musical tradition. If you’ve got a child who feels a particularly strong connection with the music and has a very expressive way of singing, you may well discover they fit in well here, and therefore the children who are like that gravitate towards St John's. The same with the adults. There are other choirs with different sorts of qualities and musical priorities, of course.

As you rightly say, the Choir is famous on the world stage but there may be members of our community who have never heard them sing. How do you encourage these people to engage with this key part of the College’s history and cultural life?

I would like as many College members as possible to know this extraordinary Choir is on their doorstep and that coming to Evensong can transcend the daily whirlwind and give you a moment of peace. Some people come to Chapel because they just like the music; some people come because they have a particular faith. It’s a space where you can be anonymous, if you want to be. No-one’s going to impose anything on you. After Evensong you can just leave or, if you want to chat further, there’s a very warm and friendly community.

You appeared on ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent (BGT) in 2019 with Truro Cathedral Choir from Cornwall, when you were Director of Music there, and performed a song from The Lion King. Is this something you could see our Choir doing?

BGT approached us to take part. Some of their scouts saw videos of our boy and girl choristers on YouTube and thought, ‘these guys would look great in the London Palladium’. We sang Can You Feel the Love Tonight in a five-part arrangement so it was something that was technically satisfying to do. We got four yeses, and it was a great experience. Ultimately, we couldn’t proceed because BGT wasn’t really designed for us. When I filled in the application form, I was asked when the act was formed, and they queried my response, which was ‘1887’. Ultimately ownership of Truro Cathedral Choir will always rest with the Chapter of Truro Cathedral in the same way as the Choir here sits within the College. So that’s not going to be handed over to Simon Cowell or anyone else.

Is classical music in blockbuster movies, for example, a gateway into choral music for people who wouldn’t normally consider themselves classical music-lovers?

Classical music needs to fight to keep its place in the mixed diet of mainstream music. Music is, at its core, a means of communicating, and if people don’t speak the language, they won’t understand what we’re saying. There are soft entry points. For example, in the Chapel Coronation Service we sang Handel’s Coronation Anthems and one of those is Zadok The Priest, which was also played at the service in Westminster Abbey. You get some pieces of classical music that have been sung for hundreds of years and, for some reason, in the evolution of everything, their music is still thrilling to listen to. It doesn’t matter that we’ve had jazz in the meantime and that we’ve had all sorts of pop music and ABBA and everything else.

We sang Zadok with a leading specialist orchestra called the Academy of Ancient Music. We knew it would be popular, and I was delighted that all of the 500 or so tickets went to College members. We had a few drinks in First Court afterwards, and there was a pudding competition for Formal dinner in Hall that night. It’s nice that we’re a College that is community-minded and that we came together to do all of that to mark such an historic occasion.

What music and hobbies do you enjoy outside of your job?

I went to see Hamilton in the West End recently. I’m not the broadest of people with my musical tastes, but I will listen to anything that’s got something to say. And Hamilton certainly has something to say. It’s very moving.

My interests are mostly music-based but I do like to explore churches, buildings and architecture, that sort of thing. Ideally in Italy, but here too. There are some stunning cathedrals in not so-far places like Lincoln, Peterborough and Bury St Edmunds. There’s plenty to do, and it’s very different in East Anglia to Cornwall.

You have already led the Choir in the College Coronation Service, which other highlights in the calendar are you particularly looking forward to?

The Choir will give the same on Tuesday night at 6.30pm for Evensong as they will when the microphones are up for BBC Radio Three’s broadcast of the Advent Carol Service. There is a tour planned for December, after the end of term, when we will be going to The Netherlands for nine or 10 days. The Choir represents the College in some of the world’s great concert venues. We can’t move our beautiful buildings from Cambridge but we can move the Choir and take a little bit of St John’s with us.

What else would you like to embrace in College life?

I’m interested in the whole landscape of music in College as well as the Choir. There’s a lot of scope for cross-pollinating.

It seems to be in the culture at St John’s that everyone is warm and friendly; mutual support seems to be very strong. It makes you think, what can I do to be part of that community, how can I enrich that further and what can music do for that? I want to find out what the community wants from music in College – not just with the Choir but more broadly. You can freeze things in time but people’s appetites and passions change and we need to see where those are heading and whether we’re serving the needs of the community at all levels. I’d love to hear from anyone who has thoughts about that.

Published 26/5/2023

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