Mark Harrison is impressed by a singer who really can sing. . .
In a world where a teenager miming into a headset microphone is classed as a “singer” it’s easy to forget what a real singer actually sounds like. Nineteen-year-old Lucy Hayward, from Barnt Green, has played the lead role in her last two school musicals and has recently taken part in a ten-day singing programme with the National Youth Choir. This is a teenager who really can sing.
Lucy only really started singing when she joined Bromsgrove School at the age of 11 and took up singing lessons. This quickly led to joining the school’s chapel choir and choral society where she was spurred on by her music teacher to aim for bigger and better things.
That bigger thing turned out to be Ex Cathedra, one of the most prestigious choirs in the UK. Based in Birmingham, the choir also runs a Junior Academy, which Lucy auditioned for and won a place in. Through this she was given the chance to perform with the main choir at various events and to sing in The Nutcracker when it was performed at the Hippodrome.
However, the highlight of Lucy’s singing career so far has to have been her ten-day Easter course with the National Youth Theatre, culminating in a massive 21st anniversary concert at Symphony Hall in Birmingham. She auditioned last summer and was admitted straight into the main choir, bypassing the training choir that most have to join beforehand.
The course at Easter was nine days of intense singing for hours on end with relatively demanding conductors.
“They were perfectionists: they would go through each individual member of the choir and check that their ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ were in key,” says Lucy.
It evidently got the results, though, and Lucy describes the experience as awe-inspiring, particularly the conducting of the world-renowned John Rutter.
On top of singing with some of the best choirs in the country, Lucy’s voice has given her the opportunity to travel the world with her talent. She talks with great passion of the places that she has visited, particularly singing Vivaldi’s Gloria in Venice: “It was just amazing.”
She has also seen some of the best choirs in the world sing at her school, with the EU Chamber Orchestra recently coming over for a performance, although she is not entirely sure why they picked Bromsgrove as their location of choice!
But it’s not all world travel and glamorous concerts – Lucy has had to put the work in to get this far. She claims to have been a late developer musically, and is pretty sure that the singing doesn’t run in her blood, explaining: “When Songs of Praise came to Barnt Green they asked my Dad if he wouldn’t mind miming.”
As with all things, practice makes perfect and most of her free periods at school were spent singing, as well as lunchtime and after school sessions. She recently gained a distinction in her Grade 8 singing exam and is currently working towards her Performance Certificate. She has also taken part in Eton Choral Courses and is attending another course this summer.
Despite her obvious talent Lucy still gets nervous singing in front of other people and prefers to practice when no one else is within earshot – family members included. “I still get so embarrassed when people can hear me practising, I always sneak off to the chapel at school when I want to sing.”
As for a future career in singing, Lucy remains undecided. As The Village went to press, she was awaiting the results of her A-level exams, which she hoped would secure her a place at Cambridge.
She has been offered a choral scholarship at Trinity College to study German and Russian, where she will be paid for singing in the choir that many have described as the best in Cambridge. Lucy is very keen to continue with music in university and beyond, and hopes maybe to branch out into conducting, saying, “I tried it once and really enjoyed it.”
You’d be hard pressed to find many teenagers who particularly enjoy listening to classical music and Lucy concedes that Vivaldi isn’t at the top of her CD collection, which displays a varied taste in music. So how about performing a bit of Britney in the future?
“Only in the shower” she replies.