Join Sing Tower Hamlets and special guests SOUND on Thursday 15th December for an evening of musical merriment, guaranteed to get you tapping your toes, swaying in your seats, and firmly in the Christmas spirit!

All proceeds from the concert will go to GrowTH, a charity providing emergency night shelter and support into permanent housing for homeless men and women across Tower Hamlets. (This will be our 10th annual fundraiser for GrowTH – our fundraising total in the last 10 years stands at just over £36K – can we take it over the £40K mark this year?! Let’s pack the place out!)

Seasonal refreshments will be served… along with a large helping of festive cheer! Book early to avoid disappointment (because Christmas ain’t Christmas til you’ve had a festive singalong with a choir!)

Thursday 15th December
8pm (doors open at 7.30pm)
St Paul’s Shadwell (302 The Highway, Shadwell, E1W 3DH)

Tickets are £12/£7 in advance (book online at www.ticketsource.co.uk/sth2022) or £15/£10 on the door.

——————————————————

SING TOWER HAMLETS was founded in 2013 by musical director Leanne Sedin to build community in East London around a love of singing! Open to all with no auditions or requirements, the choir is celebrating its 10th year together making music, and having lots of fun along the way. STH perform regularly, with venues from the Queen Elizabeth Hall and IndigO2 through to local pubs and even an adventure playground!

SOUND is an a cappella group full of unique individuals with one thing in common – they love to SING! Founded in 2013 by musical director Liz Swain, they have performed at venues including The Southbank Centre, The Roundhouse and London A Cappella Festival, as well as a host of other venues across the city. Their repertoire is contemporary, diverse, classic and eclectic and there’s always something in the mix for everyone!

Last term we had a brilliant time doing not one but two performances, collaborating with three different choirs – and a concert band to boot!

Earlier on in the summer we did a joint concert with Clapham Community Choir – a gig originally planned for April 2020! During the pandemic we made a virtual choir video together, but nothing beats singing together in person, and we were delighted to finally perform together at St Gabriel’s Pimlico in May 2022. The concert was a fundraiser for the Sanctuary Foundation, a charity promoting welcome and welfare for Ukrainian refugees in the UK, and included a joint performance of the beautiful Ukrainian lullaby Oi Khodyt Son Kolo Vikon. The gig raised £912.28 for the Sanctuary Foundation – thanks to everyone who came along!

At the end of our Summer Term we had the pleasure of collaborating with a group of brilliant young people from Altrincham Grammar School for Boys, all the way from Manchester, and the equally lovely Camberwell Community Choir. Performing at St Giles church in Camberwell, the school’s concert band accompanied singers from all three choirs for renditions of A Million Pieces by Bastille and Queen’s Radio Gaga. A great time was had by all!

We’re excited to get started with a new term on 22nd September 2022 so do come along if you want to join in the fun 🙂

This year there WILL be Christmas singing!

Join Sing Tower Hamlets and Man Choir on 9th December for an evening of festive feels and musical merriment, guaranteed to get you tapping your toes, swaying in your seats, and firmly in the Christmas spirit!

It’s been two years since our last in-person gig, and we can’t wait to perform live together again. We’re delighted this year to welcome our friends from Oxford, Man Choir, who’ll be entertaining you with their own set as well as joining STH for a few songs.

As with our Christmas gigs every year, all proceeds from the concert will be donated to GrowTH, a charity providing emergency night shelter and support into permanent housing for homeless men and women across Tower Hamlets. (This will be our 9th annual fundraiser for GrowTH, and we’re delighted to have raised over £30K for their amazing work to date!)

Thursday 9th December
8pm (doors open at 7.30pm)
St Paul’s Church (302 The Highway, Shadwell, E1W 3DH)

Tickets are £10/£6 in advance (book online at sth-christmas2021.bpt.me) or £12/£8 on the door. Seasonal refreshments will be served… along with a large helping of festive cheer! Book early to avoid disappointment (because Christmas ain’t Christmas til you’ve had a festive singalong with a choir!)

[A NOTE ON COVID: Choir members will be asked to take lateral flow tests the day of the concert, and we would recommend that all audience members do the same. Hand sanitiser will be provided throughout the venue, and you are welcome to wear a face covering if you wish, though this will not be mandatory. There will be space to sit socially distanced for anyone who would like to. We will of course be monitoring the situation regarding cases/restrictions as the weeks pass and will adjust plans for the concert accordingly if needs be.]

2020 started off a bit different for us, with our Spring Term headed up by guest choir leader Adam Saunders as our founder Leanne Sedin took some time out of London. However nothing could have prepared us (or indeed any choir the world over) for quite how different the whole year of choir was about to become!

As we look back on a very challenging year, we deeply feel the loss of singing and meeting together regularly. (We always knew it meant a lot to us, but goodness knows we’re feeling a sense of “don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone” in its absence.) At the same time we’re grateful, despite all the restrictions, for the ways we’ve been able to continue to connect online, and keep singing even if only from our separate homes! It isn’t the same, of course, as being together in person… but we’ll take it until such times as that’s possible again.

2020 gave us eight normal rehearsals at the start of the year (remember those heady pre-pandemic days?!), one cancelled concert, 17 “Sing Tower Homelets” Zoom sessions, two virtual choir videos, two socially-distanced in-person rehearsals in October, and most recently, an epic online Christmas fundraiser!

Since STH started in 2013, our December gig has been our biggest event of the year, bringing a huge helping of festive joy and raising money for the wonderful GrowTH night shelter. It was very strange for us to be looking towards a concert-less Christmas, but we were determined to still fundraise for GrowTH despite the restrictions. So on 17th December, we did a live-streamed Christmas concert – a mix of live and pre-recorded performances, home singalongs, archive choir footage, and the premiere of our virtual choir video, Put A Little Love In Your Heart!

We were absolutely DELIGHTED to have been able to raise an amazing £3130 for GrowTH through this event! HUGE thanks to everyone who donated so generously ❤️ This was just the kind of brilliant news we needed at the end of a very difficult year!

Like many choirs around the world, we were so sad to have to cancel our March 2020 concert because of the coronavirus lockdown! This was going to be a special one, our first performing together with Clapham Community Choir. Sadly, we had to shut down our rehearsals before the two choirs even got to meet one another.

Both choirs have been having their rehearsals online since then, continuing to meet and sing together (to the extent Zoom allows of course). Our choirs mean a lot to us, and we greatly miss gathering together in person week to week to sing. Until such times as that’s possible again… we decided it was time we made our very own virtual choir video! 🎶 💻

This arrangement of You’ve Got A Friend was learnt and rehearsed entirely online, recorded individually in homes, and brought together via the wonders (/occasional nearly-throwing-it-out-the-window frustrations) of modern technology. We hope you enjoy it, and that it perhaps goes a little way to brightening up some of those dark nights we’re all facing in these very strange times.

When you’re down, and troubled…. try singing. It really helps.

Music and lyrics by Carole King |Arrangement and sound editing by Adam Saunders | Video editing by Leanne Sedin

On Thursday 20th March 36 members of Sing Tower Hamlets (and a few most welcome guests!) gathered on Zoom for the inaugural session of Sing Tower Homelets*!

Let’s be honest, it’s no real replacement for being in a room together and making a joyful noise (what could be better?!). But, as we adapt to this strange new world we’re all suddenly living in, we and countless other choirs around the UK / world are getting creative in the face of coronavirus. We can continue as best we can to foster community and joy through singing, to the extent that technology allows!

No, we can’t actually SING TOGETHER over the internet. There is too much delay to sync two voices, let alone 30-odd. But, we can learn parts to new songs by singing along with the leader as they teach harmonies… we can exercise our voices and move and breathe together… we can run known songs through with accompaniment (either a leader playing live at home, or with a pre-recorded track), singing along from the comfort of our living rooms… we can talk through style and sound and technique, workshopping skills and brushing up on details… and we can do all this while seeing our fellow choir members doing the same thing simultaneously! Perhaps most importantly, we can continue to BE TOGETHER. Even if we can’t be a choir per se at this time, we can still be a singing community.

Singers said of the session that it was “very moving and very necessary”… that it “really helped to lift my mood”… that it was “great to see everyone’s beaming faces!”… and my favourite: “quite weird but amazing” 🙂

Some singers fed back that actually it was a bonus to be able to sing their part along the whole time while other parts were learning, given that they were muted. Perhaps we’ll discover other such silver linings to this weird way of doing choir during this time! It strikes me that perhaps having the opportunity to sing together-but-alone in this way might increase people’s confidence in using their own voices, and help their ownership of learning a harmony rather than relying on the person sitting next to them in a group.

In this first online session we started learning Carole King’s beautiful You’ve Got a Friend, arranged and taught by the brilliant Adam Saunders, who’s been running choir this term. We sang, “All you gotta to do is call… and I’ll be there…”, which felt very appropriate for what we were doing. While we can’t be there in person, we can be there together online, and I’ll take that.

And we’re going again, this week on Tuesday 24th March at 7.30pm. If you’d like to join, drop us a line and we’ll send you the meeting link!

In these strange times of social distancing, still we will SING.

* credit to STH founder member Renuka for this name – it is the BEST and so is she.

Sing Tower Hamlets is back for 2020 starting on Thursday 16th January and we’d love you (YES YOU!) to join us to make a joyful noise in the heart of London’s East End 🎶❤️

The choir is open to EVERYONE – there are no auditions and no requirements – you don’t need to be able to read music, and no prior experience is necessary!

Singing in a choir is good for your physical and mental health… for building community and meeting new people… for growing in confidence and creativity… for learning new skills… for shaking off the worries of the day… and for generally having a great time! Now how’s THAT for ticking a few new year’s resolution boxes?!

It’s free to try out for any first-timers, and we also offer pay-what-you-can pricing alongside our term/drop-in fees if they’d be a barrier for any reason.

Click the links above for more information on term dates, fees, and how to find us. And do get in touch if you have any questions! We hope to meet you soon!

2019 was our 7th year in a row raising funds for the brilliant GrowTH night shelter, this time at our packed-out Christmas concert Just Sing a Christmas Song on 12th December 2019.

The gig took its name from a song from Broadway’s Elf the Musical, and also included festive favourites such as Winter Wonderland and Sleigh Ride. We also partied festively with bangers such as Ain’t No Mountain High Enough and Africa, and finished off the evening on an epic audience singalong of All I Want For Christmas Is You!

The concert raised a massive £3004 for GrowTH! (With match funding from Skyscanner and Deutsche Bank, this total will rise to just over £8000 for this concert, taking our fundraising total for GrowTH to date to £29,471 – amazing!) Thank you so much to everyone who came along to celebrate Christmas with us and made this possible.

GrowTH provides emergency shelter for homeless men and women in the borough, as well as supporting the guests into more permanent housing and jobs. To find out more, visit www.thisisgrowth.org.

We’re back for 2020 on Thursday 16th January – why not join us this year to have a brilliant time singing and help raise loads of money for charity in the mean time?!

Join us at St Paul’s Shadwell on Thursday 12th December for our event of the year: the annual Sing Tower Hamlets Christmas concert raising funds for the Tower Hamlets based GrowTH night shelter!

This will be our seventh year in a row fundraising for GrowTH, having raised over £21,000 to date. We’re really proud to be supporting this brilliant charity again, which provides emergency shelter for homeless men and women for seven months of the year, as well as support into more permanent housing and jobs.

Expect an evening of pop songs, Christmas choir classics, general merriment – and mulled wine / mince pies OBVS. Festive feels guaranteed!

Tickets are £10/£6 in advance (book online at sth-christmas2019.bpt.me) or £12/£8 on the door. Our Christmas concerts are very popular so book now to avoid disappointment!

Singing in a choir builds community and fosters belonging… it improves your mood and decreases stress, depression and anxiety… has various physical health benefits… helps you grow in creativity and confidence… and of course it’s LOADS OF FUN! So what are you waiting for?!

Join Sing Tower Hamlets on Thursday 19th September for a new term, and help us make a joyful noise in the heart of London’s East End 🎶❤️

Everyone’s welcome… there are no auditions and no requirements, so no worries 🙂 It’s free to try out for any first-timers, and we also offer pay-what-you-can pricing alongside our term/drop-in fees if they’d be a barrier for any reason.

Click the links above for more information on term dates, fees, and how to find us. We hope to meet you soon!