Nail those tricky harmonies, discover the history behind the songs, have fun, and be inspired!
Join Cambridge Timeline Choir for a 4-week festive carol course, culminating in an informal performance at Mill Road Winter Fair. Sing away those winter blues and drill the harmonies of your favourite carols until you can sing them in your sleep. No sight-reading ability or prior experience required. All welcome!
When? Thursday 9th, 16th, 23rd, and 30th November 2023
Where? The Old School Room, St Barnabas Church, Mill Rd, Cambridge… AND… Sunday 2nd December (time TBC) at Mill Rd Winter Fair
How much? A whole month of festive singing for just £30!!
Well, it’s been quite a year! With the promising news on vaccine rollout, and the end of lockdown timetable apparently progressing as planned (fingers crossed), it looks like Summer 2021 should be the last term on Zoom for Cambridge and Leith Hill Timeline Choirs. We’ll be kicking off with two open sessions, which anybody can attend, on Tuesday 27th and Thursday 29th April (sign up here).
It’s been a tough year, but we think we’ve made the best of it. Of course we’ve missed singing together in the same room (terribly!)… and it’s fair to say that we (Stef and Claire) will breathe a massive sigh of relief when the time comes to put technology to one side… But there have been huge silver linings in all of this upheaval too! Welcoming new temporary members from outside Cambridge/Surrey has been an absolute delight, and we’ve been so privileged to welcome our new Dutch members, as well as friends from around the UK. We’ll be thinking hard about how to keep these precious connections in future, when things move back to their usual locations. For now, it’s full steam ahead with preparations for what we hope will be our last ever Timeline Together Term, with a plan to move back to in-person singing in the autumn. Getting together to sing later in the summer may well become possible, but we’ll provide a full term of Zoom choir and aim to schedule any in-person singing as an additional activity, outside of those rehearsals, as and when it becomes possible.
As always, the goal this term will be to recreate the togetherness of choral singing in spite of us being physically apart. The theme is music for the summer season (including summery shape-note songs, rounds, folksongs, and even a summer hymn), and ‘songs of home’ – music with words and melodies from our local areas. In the latter category we have a brand new commission by Chris Leadham (a song set in Cambridge Town), brand new arrangements by Stef and Claire, and music to celebrate local saints, who have their festivals in May and June, including a hymn about Æthelryth, the 7th-century Abbess of Ely! We’ll also be inviting members to share songs from where they grew up. Like last term, Claire and Stef will continue to work together and Leith Hill and Cambridge members are welcome to attend rehearsals on Tuesdays with Claire and/or Thursdays with Stef. We’re also continuing to welcome new members, taking advantage of the opportunity to sing with friends from around the world… So tell your friends! 🙂
We will keep you well-stocked with heart-warming harmony during these troubling times!
Each choir will run a weekly online rehearsal for an hour:
Leith Hill Timeline Choir (Claire): 7:30-8:30pm – Tuesday evenings (from Surrey)
(With a HALF TERM break in the week commencing Monday 31st May.)
Leith Hill Timeline Choir Begins the Spring Term with a Zoom session on Tuesday 27th April, 7:30–8:30pm, live from Claire’s living room. Invitations to the Zoom rehearsals arrive by email at the beginning of every week. If you’d like to sing with us, you can either: sign up for the open session on 27th April, email Claire to join or read more here.
Cambridge Timeline Choir begins with a Zoom session on Thursday 29th April, 7:00–8:00pm, live from Stef’s living room (now featuring special guest performers, Maxi and Maia, the Bengal Terrors of Madras Road). Invitations to the Zoom rehearsals arrive by email at the beginning of every week. If you’d like to sing with us, you can either: sign up for the open session on 29th April, email Stef to join or read more here. N.B., the different timings for Cambridge and Leith Hill.
Timeline Choir is a community singing group with a difference: although it is open to all, with no auditions and no requirement for members to be able to read music, the choir is set apart by its specially-arranged and artistically ambitious repertoire, which celebrates the heritage of the local area, from Anglo-Saxon times to the present day.
Leith Hill and Cambridge Timeline Choirs will remain online for the first term of 2021. Rising Covid-19 infection rates and the new national lockdown mean that we still cannot gather and sing in the same space, but we’ll nevertheless be as together as we possibly can, thanks to Zoom. Claire and Stef have been learning fast and adapting to the new technologies, and are better than ever at recreating the togetherness of the choral singing experience in spite of us all being physically apart.
Like last term, Claire and Stef will continue to work together and Leith Hill and Cambridge members are welcome to attend rehearsals on Tuesdays with Claire and/or Thursdays with Stef. We’re also welcoming new members this term, taking advantage of the opportunity to sing with friends from around the world… which is one of the silver linings of this strange digital singing period. 🙂
Each choir will run a weekly online rehearsal for an hour:
Leith Hill Timeline Choir (Claire): 7:30-8:30pm – Tuesday evenings (from Surrey)
(With a HALF TERM break in the week commencing Monday 15th Feb.)
As well as these weekly sessions, Claire, Stef, and Jon will be sharing warmup videos, rounds, technical tips, fun songs, tutorials for harmony parts, and much more as the term progresses. We will keep you well-stocked with heart-warming harmony during these troubling times!
Leith Hill Timeline Choir Begins the Spring Term with a Zoom session on Tuesday 12th Jan, 7:30–8:30pm, live from Claire’s living room. Invitations to the Zoom rehearsals arrive by email at the beginning of every week. You can email Claire to sign up or read more here.
Cambridge Timeline Choir begins with a Zoom session on Thursday 14th Jan, 7:00–8:00pm, live from Stef’s living room (now featuring special guest performers, Maxi and Maia, the Bengal Terrors of Madras Road). Invitations to the Zoom rehearsals arrive by email at the beginning of every week. You can email Stef to sign up or read more here.
Timeline Choir is a community singing group with a difference: although it is open to all, with no auditions and no requirement for members to be able to read music, the choir is set apart by its specially-arranged and artistically ambitious repertoire, which celebrates the heritage of the local area, from Anglo-Saxon times to the present day.
Although the Coronavirus crisis lockdown has made it impossible for Leith Hill and Cambridge Timeline Choirs to meet in person during the Summer Term, we have decided the show must go own! Timeline Choir is going virtual, and you are invited to sing with us from the comfort of your own homes!
What’s more, we decided to try to turn these restrictions on our activities (can’t meet in person, can’t hear each other singing in real time) into an opportunity, by embracing things we can’t do in the real world, but can do in the virtual one. First of all, we’re giving Leith Hill and Cambridge members the chance to join in with each other’s choirs this term (well, why not?!). We’ve also joined forces Jon Hughes (website here), known to TLC members as the composer of Through the Gate, one of our favourite pieces to sing. By collaborating with each other, we can combine our skill-sets to make available a far greater range of online resources over the coming term, as well as new music, fresh ideas, and the chance to connect with like-minded singers from other parts of the UK. It’s a way of turning this separation into a coming together. 🙂
We have four choirs working together for this online project.
Each choir will run a weekly online rehearsal for an hour:
Leith Hill Timeline Choir (Claire): 7:30-8:30pm – Tuesday evenings (Surrey)
The Stonegate Singers (Jon): 7:30-8:30pm – Wednesday evenings (York)
Cambridge Timeline Choir (Stef): 7:00-8:00pm – Thursday evenings (ends as the NHS clap begins)
The Roundhay Singers (Jon): 8:05-9:05pm – Thursday evenings (starts just after the NHS clap) (Leeds)
Our term will run for 11 weeks:
From w/c Monday 20th April to w/c Monday 6th July
With HALF TERM in w/c Monday 25th May.
As well as these weekly sessions, Claire, Stef, and Jon will be sharing warmup videos, rounds, technical tips, fun songs, tutorials for harmony parts, and much more as the term progresses. We will keep you well-stocked with heart-warming harmony during these troubling times!
Leith Hill Timeline Choir Begins the Summer Term with a Zoom session on Tuesday 21st April, 7:30–8:30pm, live from Claire’s living room. Invitations to the Zoom rehearsals arrive by email at the beginning of every week. You can email Claire to sign up or read more here.
Cambridge Timeline Choir begins the Summer Term with a Zoom session on Thursday 23rd April, 7:00–8:00pm, live from Stef’s living room (usually featuring special guest performer, Magnus the piano-playing cat). Invitations to the Zoom rehearsals arrive by email at the beginning of every week. You can email Stef to sign up or read more here.
Timeline Choir is a community singing group with a difference: although it is open to all, with no auditions and no requirement for members to be able to read music, the choir is set apart by its specially-arranged and artistically ambitious repertoire, which celebrates the heritage of the local area, from Anglo-Saxon times to the present day.
Autumn Timeline Choir rehearsals kick off on Tuesday 14th January (Surrey) and Thursday 16th Jan (Cambridge). As always, new members are most welcome to come and join us for the new term. This season, Leith Hill Timeline Choir take the plunge into a wonderful watery programme of sea shanties, sailor songs, and splashing sonic surprises on an aquatic theme, while Cambridge Timeline Choir also dip their toes into the waters of the fens for an East of England summer folk jolly, followed by an autumn concert celebrating the hedonistic joys of wine and romance! Expect bawdy humour from bygone eras, raucous drinking songs, ecstatic musical pageantry, and a few cheeky innuendoes.
Timeline Choir is a community singing group with a difference: although it is open to all, with no auditions and no requirement for members to be able to read music, the choir is set apart by its specially-arranged and artistically ambitious repertoire, which celebrates the heritage of the local area, from Anglo-Saxon times to the present day.
Cambridge Timeline Choir begins with an open session on Thursday 16th January, 7:30pm, at the St. Barnabas Centre on Mill Road. If you love to sing then come along and try out some beautiful old music… arranged in new ways! You can email Stef to sign up (Cambridge only) or read more here.
Leith Hill Timeline Choir resumes with an open session on Tuesday 14th January, 7:30pm, at Forest Green Village Hall, Forest Green, Surrey. If you love to sing then come along and try out some beautiful old music… arranged in new ways! You can email Claire to sign up or read more here.
Autumn Timeline Choir rehearsals resume on Tuesday 17th September (Surrey) and Thursday 26th September (Cambridge) with a pre-term sing and meet on Saturday 21st September, 3:00-6pm. As always, new members are most welcome to come and join us for the new term. This season sees Leith Hill Timeline Choir continue our righteously harmonious programme ‘Melodic Dissent II’, celebrating music as a powerful weapon in the perennial fight against cruelty and injustice, from as early as the Middle Ages and including folk songs from the North, love songs to trees from Sussex and songs of protest against land enclosure by the poet John Clare.
Timeline Choir is a community singing group with a difference: although it is open to all, with no auditions and no requirement for members to be able to read music, the choir is set apart by its specially-arranged and artistically ambitious repertoire, which celebrates the heritage of the local area, from Anglo-Saxon times to the present day.
Cambridge Timeline Choir begins with an open session on Thursday 26th September, 7:30pm, at the St. Barnabas Centre on Mill Road. If you love to sing then come along and try out some beautiful old music… arranged in new ways! You can email Stef to sign up (Cambridge only) or read more here.
Leith Hill Timeline Choir resumes with an open session on Tuesday 17th September, 7:30pm, at Forest Green Village Hall, Forest Green, Surrey. If you love to sing then come along and try out some beautiful old music… arranged in new ways! You can email Claire to sign up or read more here.
Join Cambridge Timeline Choir and Leith Hill Timeline Choir on Saturday 20th July, at St Paul’s Church, Cambridge, for a gutsy parade of beautiful but angry music, medieval to modern, which was written to right the wrong of the world in song!
From Richard the Lionheart’s musical complaint against imprisonment, to renaissance polyphony protesting the execution of martyrs during the wars of religion, to folk songs uncovering the harsh conditions faced by factory workers in the 19th century, Timeline Choir takes on the challenge of summoning up the righteous anger of past songsters, to deliver an emotionally charged as well as beautiful choral programme.
In a mixture of choral performances, solos, small ensembles, and even poetry readings, the Timeline Choir performers musically fight the good fight in an eclectic array of musical styles. You will be both challenged and uplifted by fierce and defiant psalms, abolitionist hymns, troubadour song, heartbreaking folk songs about poverty and exploitation, press gangs, war, and injustice, black humour from the first world war, anthems for universal suffrage, recusant catholic polyphony, environmental protest songs, and music of dissent from the fens.
The performance takes place at 7:30pm, at St Paul’s Church, Hill Road, Cambridge, CB2 1JP. There will be short interval in which refreshments are served. All are welcome!
Tickets will be available from Cambridge Live, from July 5th:
Inspired by a sad tale from Cambridge Timeline Choir's 'Fenland Folk' programme, our super tenor Mike Prior-Jones muses on an alternative interpretation of the story...
For a few years now I’ve been singing in the wonderful Timeline Choir, run by the multi-talented Stef Conner. Much of the music we sing is new arrangements of old tunes, including many folk songs. I didn’t have much of a background in folk music until joining the choir, and I’ve enjoyed discovering many lovely pieces that I wouldn’t otherwise have heard.
For our concert in 2017, Stef produced a really beautiful arrangement of “Lakes of Cold Fen” for three female voices, which was genuinely one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard. The tune and lyrics were taken from Mary Humphreys’ album “Cold Fen” – you can listen to a clip here – and I became fascinated by the song and read up on it. It turns out to be quite an enigma – there are a lot of different versions, and the name of the lake varies from Shilin to Colfin to Cold Flynn to Cool Finn and eventually became “Cold Fen” in the Cambridgeshire version, despite the fact that there’s no such place. Nobody really knows where the song came from, though the best guess seems to be that it’s Irish and possibly based on a true story of a young man drowning in a lake whilst swimming. There are many different versions listed here on the Mainly Norfolk site.
Anyway, as I read several versions of the lyrics, I became struck by the recurrent details in the first verse in every version:
It was early one morning young William arose
And away to his comrade’s bedchamber did go,
Saying, “Arise, oh my comrade and let no-one know,
For it’s a bright summer morning and a-bathing we’ll go.
Photo by Rory O’Bryen
Our protagonist – variously Billy, Willie, William – rises early and goes straight to the bedroom of his (male) comrade, bidding him to get up and come swimming with him, but to “let no-one know”. Why are two young men going swimming secretly early in the morning? Well, it wasn’t much of a stretch of the imagination to suggest that they might have a secret tryst, and so I wondered if I could re-tell the story of the song but giving more details of what Willie and his comrade got up to. In the traditional versions, we never know “dear comrade”‘s name, and he disappears off the scene as soon as Willie dies, with the rest of the song focusing on the reactions of his family and the details of his funeral.
So, I’ve told the story of what really happened at the lakes of Cold Fen. You may need a hankie by the end!
T’was early one morning Willie Leonard arose
Straight to his comrade’s bedchamber he goes
“Arise my dear comrade and let no-one know –
Tis a fine summer’s morning, and a-bathing we’ll go”
Willie and Aidan they walked down the lane
And there they did pass by a keeper of game
He said to the boys, “don’t go venturin’ in –
There is deep and false water in the lakes of Cold Fen”
So Willie stripped off and he swam the lake round
He came back to Aidan, his feet on the ground
“Oh it’s safe as houses, ignore the old men”
“Enjoy the sun and the swimming in the lakes of Cold Fen”
They swam to an island and when they were done
Without a stitch on they both lay in the sun
Willie saw Aidan’s fine shoulders and chest
He looked and he knew that he loved him the best
Their eyes met each other’s and then they both knew
That Aidan loved Willie, and Willie him too
They kissed on the shoreline and decided right then
They’d be true loves forever at the lakes of Cold Fen
“But what of my father?” our Aidan did say
“He wants me to marry a woman one day
Run the farm and have children, he wants me to wed
A nice local girl and take her to my bed”
Willie replied that he’d thought of a plan
They’d fly the country, move to fair Amsterdam
“there we’ll be happy, us two in one bed
we must go quite soon or else you’ll be wed”
And so they decided they’d leave at full moon
They’d take ship to Holland in the fair month of June
They swam back to shore their minds full of their scheme
Excited and happy to share in their dream
But Willie had strayed into lilies and reeds
His feet became tangled in the thick water-weeds
“Oh Aidan, my love, please don’t venture in”
“There is deep and false water in the lakes of Cold Fen”
Aidan turned back and just then saw him drown
As his head dipped down into the lake water brown
He cried as he lost him, his beloved young man
He swam to the shore and to the village he ran
And it’s down came his mother like one in despair,
All a-wringing her hands and a-tearing her hair,
Crying, “Oh Willie dear Willie, why did you go in
To the deep and false water of the lakes of Cold Fen”
Our Aidan he ran to the Hollander hoy
He left Willie’s family to bury their boy
They wrapped him in white and they laid him in clay
And the village all cried on the funeral day
But every midsummer our Aidan returns
He sits by the lake in the grasses and ferns
“Oh Willie my lover, why did you go in
To the deep and false water of the lakes of Cold Fen?”
This is my copyright (2019) but if anyone would like to perform or arrange it, please let me know! I’m grateful to Mike Lee for his idea for the plot of the song.
A couple of notes: I’ve tried to reuse some of the traditional verses and imagery from other versions. The idea of the two of them running off to Amsterdam and being happy perhaps seems a bit fanciful in a period setting, but the Netherlands are not far from Cambridgeshire by sea, so would have been a realistic place to travel to in order to escape, and homosexuality was decriminalised there in 1811, which is around the time the original song appears to have been written. A “hoy” is a small coastal ship, obviously used here to rhyme with boy…
And for anyone who'd like the see the original song, here's a cheeky little iPhone capture (Stef is joined by Clare Dyer-Smith and Meg Spencer-Thomas):
Spring Timeline Choir rehearsals resume on Tuesday 15th (Surrey) and Thursday 17th (Cambridge) January. As always, new members are most welcome to come and join us for the new term. This season sees kicks off our righteously harmonious programme ‘Melodic Dissent’, celebrating music as a powerful weapon in the perennial fight against cruelty and injustice, from as early as the Middle Ages and including folk songs from the fens, love songs to trees from Sussex and songs of protest against land enclosure by the poet John Clare.
Timeline Choir is a community singing group with a difference: although it is open to all, with no auditions and no requirement for members to be able to read music, the choir is set apart by its specially-arranged and artistically ambitious repertoire, which celebrates the heritage of the local area, from Anglo-Saxon times to the present day.
Cambridge Timeline Choir begins with an open session on Thursday 17th January, 7:30pm, at the St. Barnabas Centre on Mill Road. If you love to sing then come along and try out some beautiful old music… arranged in new ways! You can email Stef to sign up (Cambridge only) or read more here.
Leith Hill Timeline Choir resumes with an open session on Tuesday 15th January, 7:30pm, at Forest Green Village Hall, Forest Green, Surrey. If you love to sing then come along and try out some beautiful old music… arranged in new ways! You can email Claire to sign up or read more here.
