BRIT-award winning vocal trio BLAKE celebrate seven years of entertaining audiences worldwide this month, along with the announcement that they have been joined by an incredible number of choirs along the way, to whom they attribute their success.
Although trained at leading classical music colleges, the harmony group have always credited their unique sound to all three having sung with school and community choirs since they were children.
Shortly after gaining their first gold disc and a BRIT award in 2008, the singers decided to show their support for choirs in communities around the UK, by inviting them to join their live tour shows. Choirs were chosen via audition videos submitted on YouTube, with successful groups invited to sing both with the boys, but also to open the second act of each show with a solo piece of their choosing.
Since starting this campaign BLAKE have been joined by over 300 local choirs, totalling over 10,000 singers from across the UK, along with many more overseas. The types of UK choirs vary greatly and have included singers from local communities, primary schools, senior schools, state schools, private schools, choral societies, church choirs, gospel choirs, equal opportunity choirs and national choir clubs.
Choirs all continue to keep in contact with BLAKE via social media (Twitter @TheBandBlake Facebook /TheBandBlake ) with hundreds of messages left for the boys each month, thanking them for the opportunity to sing on a professional stage and urging them to keep the campaign going. BLAKE hope that by the time they celebrate 10 years together in 2017, they will have been joined by over 17,000 singers and that within that time many of those will have gone on to solo stardom. Many young singers that BLAKE sang with five years ago, are now themselves studying at classical colleges, showing that this campaign truly does inspire a new generation of vocal performers.
Humphrey Barney from BLAKE, who organised the campaign personally since it started, says “We three all owe our careers, our success and the opportunity to travel the world, to the choirs that first let us sing with them as young children and teenagers. Singing within a group helps build confidence and without a doubt leads on to some people stepping forward to take on solo singing careers”.
Stephen Bowman from BLAKE, who started singing later on in his teenage years with both bands and a school choir adds “I was never sure of whether I had a good enough voice to sing in public, but within the safety of a choir, surrounded by supportive friends, I was able to find my voice and enjoy using it. Community choirs and school choirs are undoubtedly the real-life alternative to waiting and praying for an audition on X-factor, which may or may not lead to anything. Choirs keep it real.”
BLAKE’s respect for the choral community has now spread to other parts of the world, after being joined by local choirs for tours in China, Russia, The Philippines and the Caribbean.
BLAKE have pledged to continue supporting choirs in the UK, with every show featuring one during 2014.
For more information on which venues BLAKE will be performing at, or to find out if there may be an opportunity to for your local choir to perform with the band contact them on social media @TheBandBlake on Twitter, or visit their official Facebook site: http://www.Facebook.com/TheBandBlake
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