Daily Telegraph Review.....
" In the gloomy Officers’ Mess of a rain-swept Royal Marines base on a miserable October morning, choirmaster Gareth Malone is chatting animatedly about the importance of encouraging people to sing, when he is interrupted by a very large, rather menacing individual in green Army fatigues.
“I just wanted to shake your hand,” the marine says, thrusting out his own massive mitt towards Malone. “My wife thinks you’re the dog’s bollocks.”
The contrast between the fresh-faced, bespectacled, slightly fogey-ish choirmaster and this gruff giant of British military manhood borders on the comical. Yet the encounter illustrates the degree to which Malone, while making his latest TV project The Choir: Military Wives, has charmed his way into the trust of the soldiers – and, more crucially, the soldiers’ wives – of RMB Chivenor in remote north Devon.
As a result, there’s a sense of immense emotional uplift and generosity about this series, in which Malone assembles a choir from the women left behind when a detachment from Chivenor heads out to Afghanistan for a six-month tour of duty.
“They’re not all wives but if I say wives, girlfriends and partners it gets complicated,” he says. “We chose Chivenor because it is tri-service – RAF, Marines, Army – and the whole point was to bring women together across all the services, across all the ranks.
The focus is on military wives, he says: “Because they are, to use a hackneyed phrase, unsung heroes. We sing about the Forces and everything they do, but not the people who are left behind. It seemed to me a missing part of the story. Some of the women I’ve been working with have got husbands or sons in really frontline positions. That’s very, very stressful.”
Malone decamped full-time from London to Devon with his wife Becky and newborn daughter Esther to record the series, because he wanted to see if he could give a voice to those who stay at home while their husbands risk their lives abroad.
“These women have complex lives, and responsibilities. That makes them rich and fertile territory for a choir – because you’re drawing something out of them that they like to keep hidden. I think everyone felt that it’s positive to get those difficult feelings out through singing.”
There was some scepticism initially from Chivenor’s inward-looking military community. But Malone is nothing if not persistent. He soon won over more than 40 fledgling singers eager to give his choir a chance. Some had never sung in public before. Seeing them blossom from nervous novices into full-voiced, confident choristers is one of the highlights of the BBC’s winter schedule.
“There were all the usual challenges of trying to get them to sing in harmony, get confidence up, posture and breathing. That just happens as you go along. The real challenge is dealing with the other stuff, with the emotions.” Malone cites a rehearsal in which the choir tackled the First World War standard Keep the Home Fires Burning, which proved just too much for some of them.
“They couldn’t get through it. We all felt it, because it connects you to history, to generations of women who have been in the same position before. When we sang it at the homecoming parade, I had to really hold myself together because I could see some of them cracking. The guys had just had their medals parade, they’d all come home… that’s so overwhelming. I mean, my life isn’t like that. Most of our lives aren’t like that.”
The three-part series brims with big emotions. Malone’s advice to “keep the tissues handy” is more than justified by the opening programme alone. And while viewers of previous series of the Bafta-winning The Choir will know he is capable of dealing deftly with all sorts of tricky non-choir-related situations, the stresses of life at Chivenor reach an altogether different level of complexity.
“I felt really anxious about what I was doing here,” Malone admits. “Although I had this conviction that singing could help, until you’ve done it you don’t know whether it’s going to work, and it can feel a bit silly. You’ve got guys training to go to a war zone and you’re saying: ‘Right let’s sing some songs!’ Military types don’t like to be too sentimental and in I come doing something that is very heart on sleeve, so there is a kind of friction there. We performed at Sandhurst, and standing up in front of 300 people – Army cadets, a brigadier, the camp commandant and all the rest of them – it’s the most intimidating audience I've ever had.”
The most intimidating so far, that is. The series hasn’t yet finished filming but there’s a bigger test to come. “We’re performing for the Queen at the Royal Albert Hall on November 12th,” Malone says. “We’re actually opening the Festival of Remembrance. It’s a big responsibility.” To add to the stress, his other current series, The Big Performance on CBBC – in which he teaches bashful boys and girls to belt out songs with confidence – climaxes just six days later on Children in Need.
For Malone, who sees himself as equal parts educator and musician, it’s all grist to the mill. “It’s a crazy week, but that’s how the chips fall. I really enjoy doing The Big Performance because you’re saying to these kids: ‘You can do this; I know you don’t believe it, but you can.’”
Education is even more than ever on his mind now that he’s a father. “You’ve got to have parents actively involved in the children’s education, and you’ve got to have a strong sense of fun and opportunity. I had the chance to try a great range of activities when I was young and while I haven’t ended up being an abseiler, I did it, I tried it.”
That’s one lesson that clearly went deep. “I find with young people, and with adults, if you expect something of them they tend to deliver. I think of what I’m about to do at the Albert Hall, and wonder what is the psychological trick that I need to play on myself to get through that day and be ready. I haven’t quite worked it out yet,” he grins.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8867028/Gareth-Malone-Keeping-the-home-fires-burning-with-The-Choir.html
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