THE TEAM: WARWICKSHIRE COMMUNITY CHOIR

 NOTE FROM YOUR CHOIR DIRECTOR

MELISSA ASBRIDGE

Welcome to The Contemporary Choir. If you love to sing, you’re definitely in the right place and I look forward to welcoming you to our community.

Just a little background as to how we started – my name is Melissa Asbridge and I’m a touring musician and mum to 2 wonderful little girls. Along with my husband, I co-founded and am a lead vocalist in the award-winning  Jam Hot Showband. We divide our time between touring the globe with some seriously world class musicians  (www.jamhot.band) and running our beloved Contemporary Choir Warwickshire.

But more about how The Contemporary Choir came to fruition…I used to be a busy vocal coach alongside touring, until my daughters came along and it fell by the wayside for a little while. I missed it, so we’ve made a way to fit teaching back into our happy chaos, whilst at the same time making lots of new friends and spreading a little love in and around our community. 5 years after launching the adult version of the choir, we launched The Contemporary Youth Choir, to help young people to find their voices and to be a part of an uplifting community of likeminded youngsters who love to sing.

It was an exciting journey turning this project into reality, and we have so many amazing arrangements of Pop, Rock, Disney and Musical Theatre songs that we create uniquely for our choir – it’s lots of fun transforming a song into a choral showstopper! We hold weekly rehearsals and although there are always lots of giggles (a must!), we work hard to make our material sound amazing – it really does feel great when the whole choir is cooking, if you haven’t experienced it yet then come along and you’ll see!

There are opportunities to perform throughout the year within the local community. Now if this fills you with dread then don’t worry, you’ll be under no pressure at all to perform if you just want to come along to rehearsals and sing away your stresses. Performances are fantastic on a couple of levels – firstly it gives us something to work towards, so we have clear goals and a sense of pride in our work. Secondly it gives us a platform to do a little good for a variety of charitable causes, by offering performances for local charity events and by hosting events of our own. As a choir, our main fundraising helps to support the amazing Myton Hospice and we are always proud to donate as much as we can throughout the year.

As you may imagine, touring with 21 musicians all at the top of their game gives me unique access to their abundant talents, and there will be opportunities to perform with some of these incredible players throughout the year. The biggest performance we work towards is our annual Christmas/January concert (in aid of Myton Hospice!). This is a fabulous way to raise money and just another excuse for us all to get together and have a great time whilst performing our cherished repertoire.

If you haven’t yet been along to see us, and would like to come along for a free trial with our adult contemporary choir, or book a free trial for our youth contemporary choir, please do get in touch and I very much look forward to welcoming you soon!

Melissa - Founder and Director
The Contemporary Choir