Budleigh Salterton
Male Voice Choir

The Choir's Logo

The choir's logo, which appears on our badges and notepaper, is derived from the painting "Boyhood of Raleigh" painted by Sir John Everret Millais. This painting, which hangs in the Tate gallery, depicts the young Walter Raleigh and his brother sitting on Budleigh Salterton beach listening with rapt attention to tales of the sea told by a stalwart sailor.

Budleigh Salterton is a small town, on the south coast of the county of Devon, with a tidal estuary up the River Otter and a long pebble beach forming a significant part of the Jurassic Coast. It’s a picturesque spot and the beach has a flotilla of colourful boats used for pleasure and close inshore angling. A friendly town with an interesting high street, the shops and cafés support mainly the locals for daily living, a place with history and a feeling of music in its soul.

Not far away is Exeter with the famous and beautiful cathedral and a new and exciting shopping centre, and its convenient transport location right on the M5. We are fortunate indeed to be based in a part of the country that is renowned for its beauty and such wonderful views over both land and sea.  This naturally attracts many visiting choirs to come and sing a joint concert with us.

The choir was formed in 1974 by a group of like minded men who enjoyed singing together. The first musical director Mrs Pamela Jones was with us for eighteen years, and is now the choir’s life president. She still loves to conduct the traditional last item of the concert, ‘Morte Christie’.  Pam was followed by Marion Room who stayed with us for just over four years, to be followed Allen Coles, who came on a temporary basis in the 1990s and is of course still with us.

The choir consists of around sixty members, many of whom are retired from work, from all walks of life and with a wide variety of professions and careers. Harmonious singing is a great leveller, and job status or social standing makes no difference to singing ability or the pleasure and respect that come from their place in a successful choir. The fact that the choir attracts its dedicated choristers from a wide area of East Devon, most from outside of Budleigh Salterton, is a sign of its achievement both of quality of sound and performance. We are without doubt one of the best male voice choirs in Devon.

We sing around fifteen to eighteen concerts a year, all for various charities who request us to put on a concert for them.  These charities benefit fully from the money raised at these concerts, as we make no charge for our services. Over the years of our existence we have raised many tens of thousands of pounds for such charities. Each year we perform one concert for choir funds, to raise money for expenses such as new music, rehearsal facilities and the payment of our pianist, etc. The choir has sung in most parts of Devon, in churches and halls and in Exeter Cathedral. In addition we have sung in many places and prestigious venues including Dartmouth Naval College for The Princess Royal, in Holland, many towns in the southern counties of England and unpronounceable towns in Wales.

In 2007 we made our latest CD of pieces we have not recorded before and this sells for a modest £8 at the moment it is selling quite well and is well received by those who buy it.

We book our normal performances up to two years ahead, such is our popularity, and already have a fully booked calendar for next year and, the following year is over half full. The choir regularly sing in the Sidmouth International Folk Festival and in the recently introduced Budleigh Music Festival, where we are performing again this year.

Our repertoire consists of many regular male voice choir pieces, both religious and secular, as songs from the shows, new and old pop songs, spirituals and rousing welsh hymns. This year we will have sung over 75 different pieces, all in traditional male voice choir style, that is without words or music in our hands. This is no easy task and it does mean that we have to rehearse at least once a week throughout the year.

We practice on a Tuesday evening at 7.30 pm in the Peter Hall, behind St Peter’s Church in Budleigh Salterton, and welcome any visiting choristers to our rehearsals at any time of the year. We know that the pleasure coming from a choir singing together is something that all men look for and this really shows when two choirs meet and do a concert together.

The ‘brotherhood’ within male voice choirs really came to the fore when we entered the Cornwall Festival of Male Voice Choirs in May 2007 and again in 2009 with choirs from all over the world and many from the U.K. With over 60 choirs and over 3000 choristers, we were amongst friends although not met before and perhaps never to meet again.

The Choir is a member of the National Association of Choirs.

www.nationalassociationofchoirs.org.uk