Page 80 - Final_RPS Awards 2020 Media Coverage Book

19 November 2020

Choral singing in the time of Covid

Thomas Leech

Director of the Diocese of Leeds Schools Singing Programme Thomas Leech

reflects on their Royal Philharmonic Society Inspiration Award and their work
during lockdown

Singers at Leeds Cathedral

Things that didn’t feature in my teenage dreams of musical success:

• Squinting at my ageing computer struggling to remove shouting siblings from choristers’ phone
recordings of Tudor polyphony.
• Trying to pin a banana costume into a better fit for a YouTube video.
• Panic-buying bread and crisps while delivering a keyboard to an isolating colleague.
• The sheer, tear-inducing joy of being in front of a choir as they sang together in person for the first time
in months.