The 6Music Weekend Breakfast Show are hoping to do for this decade’s music what Hans Fenger did in the 1970s with The Langley Schools Music Project from British Columbia, who performed their favourite 60s and 70s hits in choral style. The resulting album ‘Innocence And Despair’ by the Langley Schools Music Project is a cult classic.

Monday 19th March 2007
News release: No Embargo


THIS IS HARDCHORAL
Are you the Master of an alternative choir? Are your kids in the coolest school choir around? Do they prefer singing Maximo Park to Mozart? Is your child more ‘punk’ than ‘choirboy’?

BBC6 Music’s Weekend Breakfast Show are scouring the UK, looking for the best choral version, by a kids choir, of a 6 music song. Natasha Desborough, presenter of the Weekend Breakfast show, says; ‘ it can be from the current crop of bands we’re playing on the show ; The Kaisers, Razorlight, Snow Patrol, The Arcade Fire, or it could be a classic, Hendrix track, or something from the Stones, Led Zep, Radiohead or Oasis’.

Alternative choirmaster, Natasha says; ‘We want parents to encourage their kids, we want music teachers to jump on board – it’s a great way of making music accessible to kids who are probably more interested in singing Maximo Park than Mozart.’ The competition is open to Kids across the UK, Natasha says; ‘ if you’re at school and you want to have a crack at this - get a load of mates together and get rehearsing.’

The idea for the competition was sparked by a spine tingling choral version of The Kaiser Chief’s ‘I predict a riot’, which has been given a new treatment by a Warrington choir: ‘The Cheshire Chord Company’. The song was taken to the choir meet by the mother of one of the Kaiser Chief’s roadies.
Entries so far include a spookily good rendition of ‘(Don’t fear) The Reaper’ (The Blue Oyster Cult) sung by a Cambridge junior school.

Entries via CD or MP3 will be accepted up until the closing date of Friday 13th April. For details on how to enter visit Natasha’s page on the 6 music website. www.bbc.co.uk/6music

All of the entries will go on the 6 music website, then over the weekend of the 15th April the 6 music listeners will vote for their favourite, the three with the most votes will come in the following weekend (21st) and sing live in front of a panel of judges with the winners getting what thousands of bands in the UK would love to have: two weeks of airplay on BBC 6 music.