When we set up the charity Love Music in 2010, we proposed the following over-arching aim: to inspire people to be adventurous and curious with music. It’s a simple concept, but we think it is charged with creative energy and can be very powerful for everyone who works with us.

Our successful community choir is now in our 2nd year and growing every term. With over 320 singers now in the family, it seems a good time then to have a quick peek at our music choices to see whether we have stuck to the governing artistic principles of the organisation. Here is a list of the artists we have tackled in our short but dynamic history.

Rufus Wainwright
Joy Division
Ricard Strauss
Mary Chapin Carpenter
Odetta
Blondie
Burt Bacharach
Mozart
Elvis Costello
Rodgers & Hammerstein
Richard Thompson
Nick Cave
Beethoven
Irving Berlin
Consuelo Velazquez
Puccini
Pink Martini

We can also top this up with a goodly amount of traditional and new songs from Scotland, South, South Africa, India and Iran, a suite of protest songs synonymous with the civil rights movement in mid-20th century America, and workshops with the beat boxing legend The Hobbit, French operatic soprano Anne-Sophie Duprels, Scots singer and harpist Corrina Hewat, jazz saxophonist and composer Denys Baptiste, Afro-Cuban specialist Dougie Hudson and Iranian singer Roxana Vilk.

Having found time to take this retrospective trawl through our drawers, I think we can all be reasonably chuffed and also proud. Thanks to the all the members of the choir for taking the leap with us every week!

Stephen