GIRLS with a passion for singing and a serious interest in music are being offered an opportunity to join the Ely Cathedral Girls’ Choir for a Taster Day on Wednesday 15 June 2016.
The event, which is being organised by the independent school, King’s Ely, in conjunction with Ely Cathedral, is open to girls who are currently in Year 5 to Year 10 and is free to attend.
Ely was the first cathedral in the UK to offer this intensive, boarding chorister experience to girls aged 13 to 18, and remains one of only two providing the model today. Offering a unique opportunity to perform alongside professional singers, organists and conductors on a daily basis in one of Europe’s finest cathedrals, the choristers receive specialist musical training and an education at King’s Ely Senior, with a generous fee remission. By the time they leave school, the choristers will have gained the expertise and experience needed to carry on to university choral scholarships, professional musical careers, or any other path they wish to follow.
The Taster Day on June 15 will give girls an opportunity to see what life is like in the choir and to discover if they have what it takes to be a chorister themselves from September 2017.
ECGC Director, Sarah MacDonald, who is also Director of Music in Chapel at Selwyn College, Cambridge – the first woman to hold such a post in an Oxbridge chapel, commented: “The experience of a cathedral choristership is unparalleled in the training it offers. As well as the obvious musical benefits, girls also master key transferable skills such as discipline, teamwork, commitment, authority, confidence, performance, self-presentation, all of which will be valued in their time at university and by future employers, and will stay with them for the rest of their lives.”
King’s Ely has educated the boy choristers of Ely Cathedral for over 1,000 years. The girls’ choir was founded in 2006 to complement the boys’ choir and has since become firmly established as a central part of the cathedral and school communities. As well as singing its share of cathedral services, ECGC has recorded a number of CDs and has performed in prestigious venues including Westminster Abbey, the Guards’ Chapel in London, la Cathédrale Notre Dame and l’Église St Eustache in Paris. The girls board in the stunning cathedral grounds and have access to all of the opportunities and facilities which the school and cathedral can provide.
To book a place on the Taster Day, please call 01353 660707 or email janeformston@kingsely.org