Take Twenty at the Royal Festival Hall
Singing close harmony in Camden
Take Twenty have been delighting and entertaining audiences since 1979, when we were founded as an evening class.
The choir has performed in a wide variety of venues and occasions, including theatres, art centres, jazz clubs, weddings, corporate events, private parties, churches and community events.
Some of the more unusual situations have included King’s Cross station, Open Mic night at the Vortex Jazz Club and London Zoo.
There are plenty of highlights, including having performed at The Alternative Miss World Contest, a charity gala at The London Palladium, The Queen Elizabeth Hall, a residency on the Barbican foyer stage, The Royal Festival Hall, and The Marlborough Jazz Festival. We also took part in Orlando Gough’s inspiring choral works at the ENO and his multi-choral production for the bi-centenary celebrations at The National Portrait Gallery.
And we were Category Finalists in the 2010 BBC Choir Of The Year competition, held at Birmingham Symphony Hall – listen to this excerpt on us from Radio 3 programme The Choir:
Early days
Our choir founder, Malcolm Abbs, remembers: ‘Take Twenty had an inauspicious start as an evening class at the Camden Institute. It replaced a short-lived yoga class half way through the 1979 autumn term, and therefore missed the usual prospectus publicity. Rehearsals stumbled on with three or four singers, and it was touch and go whether the choir might go the way of the yoga class. However, word gradually got around that there was a ‘choral society’ that sang only the popular song repertoire – and in four part harmony. Within a year the membership had stabilized at about 20, giving the choir its name.’
Malcolm retired as Musical Director in 2009, but remained with the choir for many years, arranging new material and singing 1st tenor.