From Pub To Pulpit - Media

A hugely successful concert tour that has seen thousands of people across the country singing together to turn folk songs into hymns will have a final performance in Camden Town on 14th October as a fundraiser for St Michael's Church. Here's a video from Exeter Cathedral: :

The critically acclaimed From Pub to Pulpit tour has wowed full houses at more than twenty Cathedrals and Festivals, celebrating Ralph Vaughan Williams' 150th birthday. Camden Town will be the only Central London venue of the year-long tour.

It's been featured on BBC Radio Four; BBC Radio Three; screened live internationally on TV and was hailed as a "Highlight of the Vaughan Williams Festival Year" by The Times; The Guardian; The Telegraph; The Observer; Gramophone and Living Tradition Folk magazines.

Although the tour has now officially ended, the additional performance will mark the end of the Vaughan Williams' anniversary year. His birthday is 12 October.

"We want to say thank you to St Michael's, because it's where Broomdasher rehearse every week. We want to raise the roof there with everyone singing at the tops of their voices as they have across the country". said Broomdasher's Margaret Moore, also a Camden Town resident.

Father Michael Thomas, Parish Priest at St Michael's, who is a devotee of Vaughan Williams, said: "We're very excited, not least because Vaughan Williams' wife Ursula lived in Gloucester Crescent, just a five minute walk from the church".

As well as Broomdasher, the concert features instrumental duo The Pagoda Project, with renowned accordionist Paul Hutchinson and clarinettist Karen Wimhurst.

Tickets cost £10.00 and are available from Eventbrite: From Pub to Pulpit Tickets, Sat 14 Oct 2023 at 19:30 | Eventbrite

In the concert, the audience join in with the organ; choir and two groups in a unique and rousing tribute to Vaughan Williams, who was a renowned folk song collector. He borrowed the tunes from some of the working people's favourite folk songs to use for some of the best hymns in the 1906 English Hymnal he edited.

Broomdasher and The Pagoda Project take the audience through the acapella folk song, dance variations and a glorious climax with full-blooded hymn renditions.

They include "To Be a Pilgrim", and "I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say", transformed from the folk songs "Our Captain Calls" and "The Murder of Maria Marten".

Here's what people have said about From Pub to Pulpit:

It's very different to what we normally do, but the audience involvement was magnificent and it was hugely enjoyable.

A unique idea that was everything I hoped it would be and more.

It was a fabulous concert and a great way to start our weekend.

A beautiful, magical evening exceeding all expectations and drawing our biggest 900th Anniversary audience.

My favourite event at this year's Festival. Standing room only and everyone singing

Media responses:

A unique piece of live musical education and entertainment with a truly rollicking flavour

Proves that the Devil doesn't have all the Best Tunes. Brilliant.

An Excellent idea with excellent performers

It's such a brilliant idea and I'm not surprised that audiences are responding so well. Extremely uplifting.

A wonderful idea brilliantly brought to life by talented and exciting performers. The joy it brings is amazing.

Ingrave Epiphany Album Review

If you caught any of the tour performances, Ingrave Epiphany makes for a solid memento as well as offering the group’s interpretations of the songs that Vaughan Williams collected and set his imagination alight, but it also stands a highly enjoyable and significant work in its own right. Full Review

Hundreds Of Voices Join Broomdasher And Coracle In Turning Folk Songs Into Hymns For Vaughan Williams Birthday

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An acapella folk group, a classically trained instrumental trio, twenty cathedral organ ists and choirs, community choirs and concert audiences will turn folk songs into hymns in a flagship nationwide tour as part of RVW150.

“From Pub to Pulpit”™ is an imaginative and rousing concert tour which brings to life the musical journey of folk songs Vaughan Williams collected before “borrowing” the tunes for hymn arrangements in The English Hymnal he edited in 1906.

It is the only RVW150 event undertaking a national tour, which runs over the whole year of celebration. It is also the only project that crosses the boundaries of Vaughan Williams’s’ work, bringing several genres together in a popular and accessible way.

Acapella folk group Broomdasher and folk/jazz/classical instrumental trio Coracle join the Cathedral organists and all the other singers to raise the roof with full-blooded renditions of some of the country’s best loved hymns. They include “To Be a Pilgrim”; “O Little Town of Bethlehem”; “Tis Winter Now the Fallen Snow” and “I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say” which will be musically transformed in the concerts from the folk songs “Our Captain Calls”; “The Ploughboy’s Dream”; “Brisk Young Farmer” and “The Murder of Maria Marten”.

The concert premieres during the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee weekend on 3 June in Down Ampney, the Gloucestershire village church where Vaughan Williams was born. It ends at the July 2023 Gloucester Cathedral Three Choirs Festival.

The venues currently confirmed are Gloucester; Wells; Lincoln; Exeter; Coventry; St Davids Pembrokeshire; Brecon; Chester;  Hull; Derby; Newcastle; Carlisle; Blackburn; Chelmsford; Down Ampney Church, Gloucestershire; St Michael and All Angels, Ledbury, Herefordshire and St Michael's Church Camden. There are ongoing conversations with St Edmundsbury; Leicester; Croydon; Leeds and Lichfield.  Additionally, there are proposed performances /workshops at Broadstairs and Sidmouth folk festivals, the National Centre for Folk Arts and the English Folk dance and Song Society – home of the Vaughan Williams Library.

The project was devised and produced by John Palmer, who created Broomdasher’s Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady folk musical and CD last year. “It seemed to be an unusual and engaging way to celebrate the huge influence Vaughan Williams had on so many aspects of English music – and it gives thousands of people the opportunity to sing and to bring some joy back into our lives after the depression of Covid, “ he said.
 
It is a collaboration with each venue and will be different at every performance. The host Director of Music will add their influence by bringing their own pieces to the repertoire and give their singers a chance to shine.

Outreach projects are being arranged, with workshops to involve community; youth and other choirs in making a significant contribution to the concerts. The National Association of Choirs, with 700 choirs, is also hugely supportive, encouraging their members to join the workshops and concerts in their local areas.

The "From Pub to Pulpit"™ section makes up a quarter of the whole concert. In it, Vaughan Williams's hymn arrangements are “reconstructed” on a musical step ladder from their folk roots to the Hymnal version.

Verse one of the original folk song words will be sung by an unaccompanied voice. Other voices harmonise from verse two and the song transforms through instrumental variations, to end with the Cathedral or Church chorus, congregation and artistes singing a stirring rendition of the hymn.

One of the other sections feature individual performances by the host choir; Broomdasher and Coracle, all reflecting Vaughan Williams’s wider repertoire.
This reflects RVW’s belief that “musical ‘arrangements’ expand the original performance conditions from the home and the pub to venues like the classroom, the church and the concert hall”.
Hugh Cobbe of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust said: “This extremely imaginative and unique contribution to the RVW 150 celebrations crosses the boundaries between the different genres of Vaughan Williams’ music in a way that no other event will”.

BROOMDASHER are a five-voice London-based acapella group with many years of experience between them before they first came together in 2017.

Among their number is soprano Josephine Swinhoe, who was taught by Vaughan Williams protégé John Carol Case.

All their recordings are in the British Library's National Sound Archive Collection as " an outstanding example of grass roots folk music today". Their latest album is a live version of their lavishly praised Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady Folk Musical which toured in 2021.   

CORACLE is a new trio bringing together three vastly experienced and well-respected musicians who have large followings in their own right.

Paul Hutchinson is an accordionist and one half of the extremely successful duo Belshazzar’s Feast, who have been entertaining audiences around the world for more than 25 years. Performer, teacher, composer and humourist, he is much admired for his imaginative and inspiring compositions. His lockdown album Petrichor earned critical acclaim.  

Karen Wimhurst is a clarinettist and composer, well known for her cross-genre collaborations and other bespoke enterprises. She is a long-term collaborator with Paul. Their previous groups Pagoda Project and The Maniacs were praised for their inventiveness and unique mixture of traditional influences with improvisation and humour.

Anna Tam is a classically trained singer and musician who is a former member of the extremely popular Medieaval Baebes. She plays a range of unusual instruments, including nyckelharpa, hurdy gurdy and viol da gamba. She is now concentrating on folk music and her debut album Anchoress gained five-star reviews.  She was shortlisted as 2021 Folk Instrumentalist of the Year