A VILLAGE choir has been reunited over the internet during lockdown to record tributes to all those affected by the coronavirus epidemic.

Under their choir master Kevin Dowson, Crowle Singers have so far produced five virtual performances of specially selected material with all the singing parts recorded individually at home and later blended together to create complete performances.

The choir actually has its roots in Droitwich High School, where Mr Dowson was head of music for 35 years before retiring in 2016. At a school choir reunion several years ago, some former members said they would like to carry on singing, the church in his home village of Crowle offered facilities, so Crowle Singers was born.

Mr Dowson said: “As the Covid-19 death toll started to grow my attention turned to those grieving the loss of a loved one and whether anyone was recognising their grief. I felt the strong need to acknowledge this tragedy in the only way I knew how - with music.

“Crowle Singers were on furlough, so in an effort to keep their musical minds active I suggested taking an earlier composition of mine ‘Away in a Manger’ (not the popular hymn) and adapting the lyrics to recognise the grief that more and more people were being plunged into by the epidemic.

“We are very fortunate to have a very talented wordsmith and video editor in the choir, Cathy Dhonau, who quickly wrote the lyrics to the re-named ‘Away in a Heartbeat’. The choir recorded their parts to the new lyrics in lockdown, I layered all the recordings and Cathy stitched the performance together in a sensitive video.

“The video was fairly popular on YouTube, we even had interest from the public in France, so we hastily produced another one with French sub-titles provided by Mike Burton, another choir member. The messages of support we had from ‘Away in a Heartbeat’ were really moving: the piece did exactly what I hoped it would do.”

After an internet appeal, the next video involved the wider community and was a re-working of The Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love” with instrumental backing This was a technical masterpiece, involving the marrying together of nearly fifty home videos and more than 70 audio tracks

Mr Dowson added: “I am indebted not only to the skills of Cathy Dhonau our video editor, but also our local sound engineer Hugh Robjohns for bringing all the sound tracks together. In my opinion the end result, and indeed the whole project, has been a shining example of community spirit at its very best through the power of music”

“Having had the experience of five successful virtual performances I’m now planning to create two events for the end of the year. For Crowle Singers Christmas Concert we intend to ask our supporters for their 10 favourite Christmas pieces from our now extensive festive repertoire so that we can create a list to prepare virtual performances for a complete virtual concert.

“Similarly we’re planning to create a virtual Crowle Church Carol Service carol service along the lines of ‘All You Need Is Love’. I’ll be asking for volunteers from the Crowle community and farther afield to take part virtually in a variety of ways.”