FORMER Beirut hostage Terry Waite has added his support to a video by Warrington Male Voice Choir showing support for the NHS, social carers and other key workers with a virtual performance of You Raise Me Up.
The former Archbishop of Canterbury envoy spent nearly five years in isolation and experienced first hand the inner peace of music towards the end of his enforced captivity.
Conducted by Musical Director Russell Paterson, thirty members of Warrington Male Voice Choir came ‘together’ on screen, from their own homes across Warrington and beyond; one even singing from a care home, where he’s undergoing rehabilitation following major surgery.
Just weeks after the choir began virtual rehearsals they were all keen to work on a special performance for such a well deserving cause, using British composer Alan Simmons’ arrangement of You Raise Me Up, a song with such powerful words and meaning and very appropriate for the times we find ourselves in at present. Each choir member, including soloist 2nd tenor Mike Park, sang their own part at home, to the same prepared rehearsal track, and sent their individual recordings to Russell and baritone Barrie Probert who, between them, did the technical bits to produce the end result.
Commenting, Russell said: “Performing is in the choir’s DNA so it was a logical step to move from virtual rehearsal to virtual performance. I am, however, delighted at how many of the men overcame their fears both technological and vocal to submit recordings of themselves”.
This is not the first time Warrington Male Voice Choir has used music and song to support a particular cause. During the 1990s it used music to build bridges of peace & reconciliation across the island of Ireland, in response to the terrorist bombings in Warrington in 1993.
In 1996, in tribute to the choir’s humanitarian role, Terry Waite CBE became its Patron. Terry was keen to add his support to the choir’s latest initiative: “For almost five years, I was in strict solitary confinement without books, music or any companionship. In the last weeks of my captivity I was given a small radio on which I could receive the BBC World Service. The music of Elgar was being played, allowing me to listen to the first music I had heard in years. I have often said that good music has the capacity to breath harmony into the soul and that night I was given some inner peace through the language of music. At this difficult time of isolation, many people will be feeling the need for inner peace. I hope that you find both peace and hope through the singing of Warrington Male Voice Choir. They are singing for you”.
Former Beirut hostage Terry Waite CBE
