Podcast Episode 61: Pop Chorus - The benefits of singing

Hello, my name is Amy Taylor and I'm a solicitor. I work at Ellison Solicitors in Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk in the UK and I specialise in private client matters. Whilst I could spend time today talking to you about my private client work to include wills, lasting powers of attorney, court protection matters, I wanted to talk to you about something that is a bit closer to my heart. So whilst the day job is great, it's a brilliant career, it pays the bills and it does give me an enormous amount of job satisfaction. At the start of this year, I think having gone through the pandemic and through the lockdowns, I realised that I needed to do something for myself, for my well-being. I got to the stage where I was getting really anxious, getting frustrated, losing my temper at home with the children and with my husband, which was really unlike me. So I started to explore avenues that I could work on myself, give time to myself. I love my time as a mum, wife, employee, but I just needed something that was for me, not in any of my other roles or wearing any of my other hats. So when I was at school I loved singing, absolutely loved singing. The choir performances we would put on at middle school and secondary school were amazing. We did Last Night of the Proms, we did West Side Story, we did the most amazing productions and I always got so much enjoyment from my singing. So I had a on the internet as you do, a little google, and found Pop Chorus which is a community choir based in the Suffolk area. There are a number of Pop Chorus choirs that take place each week and living close to Framlingham in Suffolk I decided to go along to the Framlingham group. I did put it off for a few weeks because again those life events get in the way, work, wife, mum but eventually the lady who organises pop chorus actually emailed me and said you know are you going to come along and give us a try so i did and it was amazing we unashamedly sing five part harmonies i believe to pop songs so i turned up for my first week and we were doing a version of juice by lizzo which i wasn't expecting at all i was expecting it to be quite choral and perhaps more traditional but it wasn't it was fun and these pop songs that we were covering were brilliant. From Blur to Stereophonics to Kelly Clarkson. Gosh I can't remember them off the top of my head. So it was really really good and I committed to taking part in the 10-year anniversary concert which was being put on at the Regent in Ipswich. So I had a bit of a feat on my hands to learn 15 songs, I think it was, within quite a short space of time and whilst the tunes go in quite easily, the lyrics not so much, they tend to fall out of my head at the most inappropriate times like when you're performing. But anyway we got there and the best bit about the concert I think was singing Mr Blue Sky, which if you've heard is a very uplifting song and we all had our sunglasses on and we were all bobbing around on the stage and some people forgot their words and some people forgot the tune but once you come together as a massive choir I mean we must have been a good 200 strong it it was this wall of sound that brought so much joy and excitement to the audience. So that was brilliant and we raised a lot of money for a charity in Ipswich called 4YP which is a youth charity that do a lot of outreach work with the schools around Suffolk. They have various youth charities, access to counselling, so you know they're a really really important charity in our area because as we know children and young adults seem to be developing mental health issues, whether this is a new thing I don't know or whether it's just something that is more focused on and picked up and acted upon by schools. So we do a lot of really good work for 4YP. So what's the next event with Pop Chorus? Well this weekend, I mean I'm doing this recording on the 1st of December, so on Sunday we are going to a choir event where we are singing at the Tower of London. I think there's lots of choirs from all over the country coming sing at the Tower of London and we are doing a few Christmas songs and a few of our more upbeat pop songs and we're going to sing to areas where the public can see us but we're also going to sing on the lawn where the public aren't allowed and we will essentially be singing to the change of the guard which is quite exciting and obviously once in a lifetime opportunity all that stuff all that jazz. So I'm really, really looking forward to that. And then my final event for the year with Pop Chorus, which I think will probably be my favourite event, is on Christmas Day we are going to a hall in Stow Market where we're going to sing to a group of people who are going to attend at the hall to have their Christmas lunch. Now this group of people are people who would be on their own on Christmas Day. So they come along to the hall, they have their lunch and they get serenaded by the wonderful pop chorus singing Christmas songs to them which will be really really good and it's just for half an hour on Christmas day. I know Christmas day is home with the family and all that stuff and I do get so much enjoyment from that but I think it'll be really good to give back on Christmas day to those who would be on their own. I've roped in the family of course the husband and the children are coming along and they will be donning Christmas hats and singing Christmas songs to the people while they eat their lunch, which is great. And we will have our Christmas dinner later on in the day, which of course doesn't matter because we can have our dinner any time and we're lucky to have our family around us to enjoy that. So that's it for this year for Pop Chorus. What's in store for next year? Who knows? There's always lots of gigs going on. There's always lots of new members. We pride ourselves on being an all-inclusive choir. This thankfully means, for lots of people, that there are no auditions. You turn up and if you can get air out of your mouth and make a noise, then you're in the choir. And do you know what? When there's 200 of you singing together, it doesn't matter if some of you haven't got a voice like Adele, and it doesn't matter if some of you are a little bit out of key, because the whole point is that we come together, we have fun. It is great for mental well-being, you know, singing has so many benefits and I finish my work day on a Thursday, so I work three days a week Monday, Tuesday and Thursday and I finish work on a Thursday and I trundle along to Pop Chorus at 7.30 and by the time I come out there I'm completely decompressed, my blood pressure has gone down, I'm completely relaxed and it really sets me up for a nice three-day weekend each week to enjoy my family and not get cross with them. So that's it really. I'm sure that I can come back at some point and bore you with details about Wills and Powers of Attorney and all things Private Client, but for now I just wanted to add a little something that gives me a bit of magic in my life and hope that everybody else listening to this has something in their life that is just for them, that gives them the same joy and tonic that my choir gives to me. Thank you for listening.