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Four Lanes Male Choir

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“Sing we for Pleasure - for One and All”

 

Four Lanes Male Choir’s home is the village of Four Lanes, near Redruth in Cornwall and we are recognised as having a very fine reputation for male voice singing. We have over 60 singers and give concerts throughout Cornwall and beyond, often for charitable organisations, and arrange concerts with other community choirs and musicians. We also take part in choir competitions and festivals.

 

The choir was formed in 1944 to welcome home troops from the Second World War and our first musical director was Wilfrid Brown, who steadily built the choir's reputation. Wilfrid continued as musical director until 1969 his nephew Ronald Brown succeeded him.

 

Under Ronald Brown’s leadership the choir won many competitions, including the Camborne Music Festival on 12 occasions. We also competed at the Llangollen Eisteddfod and won at the prestigious Elgar Festival in Worcester cathedral, where we were complimented by the chairman adjudicator for our beautiful rich tone. In 1983, the choir was presented with a special audience award for the most enjoyable performance at the Sainsbury Choir Festival in the Royal Albert Hall.

 

In 2004, after 35 years' service to the choir, Ronald retired as musical director and was succeeded by Alastair Taylor, a fine musician with a great reputation as a pianist, organist and baritone soloist. Under Alastair’s leadership, the choir won the titles for best Cornish and best British choir at the 2009 International Male Voice Choir Festival. At the 2011 festival, the choir took 2nd place in the British choir section and again won the award for best Cornish choir.

 

In 2010, Alastair Taylor was succeeded as musical director by Mike Uren, previously our accompanist for 35 years. Under Mike’s leadership we won, once again, the Camborne Music Festival and took the award for highest number of points among all competing choirs.

 

Mike was succeeded as musical director in late 2013 by Tim Hosken, another fine musician with an excellent reputation for leading choral singing in Cornwall, and we anticipate being strong contenders at a number of festivals and competitions in the future. In March this year, the choir took two top prizes at Cornwall Music Festival, winning the Choral Championship Edgar Kessell Gold Award in a sing off against three other class-winning choirs; and the Holman Cup for the best male choir over 30 singers.

 

Four Lanes Choir have had the privilage of signing with some of the countries finest signers over the years in concert, these include Paul Potts, John Trevelyan and Lesley Garrett to name a few.

 

After 70 years, a marked feature of Four Lanes Male choir is our commitment to community singing, comradeship and a love of the Cornish choral tradition. This sentiment is conveyed in our choir’s motto ‘Sing we for pleasure - for one and all’.

 

 

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