Gospel Choir of the Year, Part 1 Songs of Praise

Six of the best amateur choirs in the country are here in London

to take part in a special Songs Of Praise.

The audience are gathering.

-It's an awesome occasion.

-Just really excited.

I'm hoping that our choir will win.

The choirs are raring to go.

It's time for the Gospel Choir of the Year.

Hello, Josie and I are delighted

to welcome you to the historic Hackney Empire.

Over its long history, this stage has witnessed

some incredible performers, from Charlie Chaplin to Cliff Richard.

From Laurel and Hardy, to Russell Brand,

and tonight, we aim to raise the roof

with the glorious sound of gospel.

CHEERING

Over the next two weeks, these six choirs,

who have made it through to the final,

will sing with passion and faith,

but only one will become the Songs Of Praise Gospel Choir of the Year.

I, for one, can't wait.

Josie, tell us what you're going to be up to with the choirs.

I'm going to be backstage,

capturing their reaction as they complete their performance.

So of course I'm expecting tears... Of joy, everyone!

I'll get there and I'll see you when you finish. Thanks, David.

See you later!

Now, it's time that we introduce our six choirs.

We have, from London, the BIG Choir.

From Coventry University, Gospel Rhythms.

From Barking, Living Faith Connections.

From the North of England, it's Aine.

From East Sussex, it's Lewes Sings Gospel.

And from right here in Hackney, it's Reapers Choir.

They're a real mixture of church, community

and University choirs, each with their own distinct of style

and over the next two weeks,

they'll sing two of their favourite gospel songs.

With this standard of singing,

it's going to be a real challenge for our celebrity judges.

So let's meet them.

She grew up singing gospel music in her church and went on

to become a successful singer and a Queen of Soul, and a fashion icon.

Please welcome Mica Paris!

He's the voice of Premier Radio and with his group, River Songs,

is an internationally acclaimed

multi-award winning UK Gospel artist.

It's Muyiwa Olarewaju!

And finally, when it comes to singing, this woman knows her stuff.

She's taught me a thing or two!

She's a MOBO gospel award-winning celebrity vocal coach,

television presenter and wife to a very lucky man, Carrie Grant!

Our first choir has chosen a song famously sung by artists

such as Paul Robeson and Louis Armstrong.

Here with their own take on the traditional spiritual,

Go Down Moses, it's the BIG Choir from London.

The BIG Choir is a training choir.

We're not just teaching singing techniques.

I wanted to empower people to take control of their voice.

It has helped me get through some pretty dark times in my life,

just singing this very dynamic, joyful music

that gives you energy, gives you hope.

I really strongly feel the connection

to something greater than myself,

and it gives me a lot of joy as well.

So, Go Down Moses is a very powerful song

that's synonymous with the slave trade.

# So let my people go... #

It's definitely a very powerful song to sing.

It's really just about sharing that story that's in the song,

and that's your faith, that's your passion.

# Let my people go! #

# Tell old, tell old, tell old

# Phar-aoh

# Let my people

# Go

# Go down, Moses

# Way down in Egypt's land

# Tell old Pharaoh

# To let my people go

# Go down, Moses

# Way down in Egypt's land

# Tell old Pharaoh

# To let my people go

# When Israel was in Egypt's land

# Let my people go

# Oppressed so hard they could not stand

# Let my people go

# Go down, Moses

# Way down in Egypt's land

# Tell old Pharaoh

# To let my people go

# Go down, Moses

# Way down in Egypt's land

# Tell old Pharaoh

# To let my people go

# Let them go

# Let them go

# Let my people go

# Let them go

# Let them go

# Let my people go

# Let them go

# Let them go

# Let my people go

# Let them go

# Let them go

# Let my people go

# Let my people go

# Let my people go

# Let my people go! #

The BIG Choir!

Well, Mica, BIG were the first choir.

Did they set a high enough standard?

That was pretty high.

I loved the way their faces looked, they looked so passionate,

and they were singing from the heart.

I was watching all of them, they were giving everything they had.

Muyiwa, they started with a traditional spiritual,

what did you think of their interpretation?

The message of the song is liberation, freedom, and I got that

from the faces and the hands of some of the guys,

especially at the back.

I was ready to run out of here saying, I'm free, I'm free,

praise God, I'm free!

Carrie, they're called BIG, the Big Choir,

did that sound live up to their name?

By the time you are going full pelt in the middle,

it was fantastic, and more than anything,

this genre is about telling a story and you certainly told the story.

Thank you, judges, and thank you, BIG Choir.

That was great!

You seem really thrilled with that performance.

Oh, yes, the choir just gave it everything they had.

I'm really, really happy with that.

Lots of energy in there, we were in the zone

and I felt we just gave it everything we had.

Did you enjoy that?

All: Yes!

Time now for a University choir.

From Coventry, with Here I Am To Worship, it's Gospel Rhythms.

Sometimes you feel down, you've got so much coursework, deadlines, exams,

and you still see people coming together,

not just to relieve the burden and stress

but just really enjoy each other's company

and also enjoy something that we like doing, which is singing.

I think music is a thing that attracts people to the choir

initially, but faith really, and just the love between us

is what holds us together as a choir.

Rebecca?

She really puts her heart and soul into leading Gospel Rhythms

and she is strong for us and really encourages us to do our best as well.

We have chosen to sing Here I Am To Worship.

# Here I am to worship... #

It really is the heartbeat of the choir. We love to worship,

we love to praise God with our music.

It would be amazing to win the competition.

Amazing really is an understatement, it would be phenomenal.

This could be the year, you never know. Fingers crossed!

# Light of the world

# You stepped down into darkness

# Opened my eyes

# Let me see

# Beauty that made this heart adore you

# Hope of a life spent with you

# Here I am to worship

# Here I am to bow down

# Here I am to say that you're my God

# You're altogether lovely

# Altogether worthy

# Altogether wonderful to me

# I'll never know

# How much it cost

# To see my sins

# Upon that cross

# I'll never know

# How much it cost

# To see my sins

# Upon that cross

# I'll never know

# How much it cost

# To see my sins

# Upon that cross

# The cross...

ALL SING HARMONIES

# The cross

# The cross

# The cross

# Here I am to worship

# Here I am to bow down

# Here I am to say that

# You're my God. #

Gospel Rhythms, everybody!

That's a popular worship song, I know it's hard to judge worship,

but was that a sincere performance?

I think, absolutely.

The message of the song, because Tim Hughes who wrote the song,

always talks about his message was humility and wanting more of God.

You got that from their performance

cos many a time, people think, gospel music,

you've got to jump all over the place

and jump up and down, but they delivered.

Carrie?

I thought it was a very brave choice

and I loved the fact that you took a song

that was normally very middle-of-the-road

and you put a totally different sound to it,

which was great. I loved the tone and diction.

I'd like to see more of a connectedness between the lyrics

and the whole person.

Certain people, you can see it on you, whereas for others,

you're a little bit like, I'm standing here

and it's a performance and it's scary!

It is a bit scary standing in front of a big audience, isn't it?

Mica, you started singing at a young age, how scary is it?

Don't ask me!

I started when I was 11, singing in front of an audience like this.

So it's really terrifying,

but I want to say that the presentation was fantastic.

What I loved was the harmonising. I thought it was so perfect.

Every single note together that they sang sounded just so beautiful.

Ladies and gentlemen, Gospel Rhythms!

What did you think about what the judges had to say?

I really appreciate their comments.

Connecting more with the song

is something that's really crucial in gospel,

especially when we are the youngest choir and sometimes

nerves can get in the way, so we appreciated having them say that -

relax and just connect.

Next up, it's the turn of a choir from here in Hackney,

although they tell me they've never performed on this stage before.

It's Reapers Choir!

The Reapers Choir, I'd say, is a young, vibrant, gospel choir.

I grew up in this church and so I have always

sung in the church.

Then I came to direct the Reapers Choir.

Well, what can I say about Anu?

She knows what she wants, so if you're not pushing and pulling,

she's really keen on that and having wide mouth shapes.

You're not singing correctly if you don't have that.

I wrote Stand Still after my dad passed away.

He was the overseer of the church

and that was a difficult time for me, personally.

It really just came to me that whilst everything is crashing down

and unrecognisable, really, just stand still, let God take over.

We're not really in it for the win.

The real winning is getting a chance to be on this stage,

being on this platform, and to be able to share Christ,

and that's what being a Christian, essentially, is all about.

And if we win, hey, we thank God. If we lose, we thank God.

# When your world is falling down around you

# Crashing down around you

# Coming out about you

# And your life is spinning so fast

# You can't see

# Your way through

# Your way out

# You can't see the light

# For you

# Just be still

# Stand still

# Watch the Lord take it over

# And fix it for you

# Just be still

# Stand still

# Let Him move in and take the control

# And give you victory

# Nobody told you it would be easy

# But nobody told you it would be this hard

# When in your life the storms are blowing

# Only one place where you can find your guide

# Just be still

# Stand still

# Watch the Lord take it over

# And fix it for you

# Just be still

# Stand still

# Let Him move in and take the control

# Just be still

# Stand still

# Watch the Lord take it over

# And fix it for you

# Just be still

# Stand still

# Let Him move in and take the control

# And give you victory

# He will give you victory

# He will give you victory

# He will give you victory

# Yeah, yeah, yeah

# He will give you victory. #

-CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

-Reapers Choir, everybody.

Now, Carrie, that song was written by the choir director, Annie.

It's a brave choice to sing an original composition.

Was it the right choice?

It's not a brave choice when the song is that good.

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE That was...brilliant!

Soprano's sound... Mwah! Mwah!

Amazing! Amazing!

Even...

Even to the extent that your vibrato, the undulation in the voice,

is all in time. Amazing! APPLAUSE

-Mica, I think Carrie quite liked it.

-Yeah, yeah!

An all-female choir, completely different balance of voices.

-Did that balance within the choir work for you?

-It does.

It totally works. There's no doubt.

It's quite refreshing as well, to see all females singing in a choir.

I think the presentation was really good.

I felt that they were all together. I thought they were great.

-CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

-Really nice.

The problem I have is they brought out the vain side of me

cos they came on, I looked at the prints on their skirts

and thought, "I'm so glad I'm not the only one wearing African print!"

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

But on a serious note, the song is still ringing in my heart,

just be still, stand still,

and for me, this is the beauty of this competition.

It allows us to see

the great quality we have in the UK in song writing and singers.

Keep going.

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

Ladies and gentlemen, let's hear it for the Reapers Choir.

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

You turned that audience into a congregation just then.

I don't know what to say!

I'm speechless, which people who know me

will find very funny cos I'm never speechless!

It was just...really wonderful to sing on that amazing stage

and to minister for all those people.

Well, we're halfway through our Gospel Choir competition

in the wonderful setting of Hackney Empire.

There are still three more choirs to perform,

so don't decide on your favourites yet.

Our next choir say they're mainly from the north of England.

I'll let them explain. It's Aine.

In Aine, our members

aren't bound by geography. We're bound by

a shared commitment to the same musical and spiritual values.

So, we come from different cities, and as often as we can,

we come together and sing.

Alex as a conductor is very intense and he expects a lot of us,

but he also has really high expectations of himself as well.

We are Bible believing Christians who sing to express our faith

and share it and worship God at the same time.

# Shout to the Lord All the Earth, let us sing... #

Shout To The Lord is a very simple but very powerful song that is

directly about praising God and an act of praise all at the same time.

Being part of a small choir, you have no place to hide,

so we have to make sure that we do know the music really well.

# My Jesus, my saviour

# Lord, there is none like you

# All of my days

# I want to praise

# The wonders of Your mighty love

# My comfort, my shelter

# Tower of refuge and strength

# Let every breath

# All that I am

# Never cease to worship you

# Shout to the Lord

# All the Earth, let us sing

# Power and majesty Praise to the King

# Mountains bow down and the seas will roar

# At the sound of Your name

# I sing for joy and the works of Your hands

# Forever, I'll love you Forever I'll stand

# Nothing compares to the promise I have

# In You

# Shout to the Lord All the Earth, let us sing

# Power and majesty Praise to the King

# Mountains bow down and the seas will roar

# At the sound of Your name

# I sing for joy at the works of Your hands

# Forever, I'll love You Forever I'll stand

# Nothing compares to the promise I have

# Nothing compares to the promise I have

# Nothing compares to the promise I have

# Nothing compares to the promise I have

# Nothing compares to the promise I have

# Nothing compares to the promise I have

# Nothing compares to the promise I have

# In You

# In You

# In You

# In You

# In You

# In You

# In You. #

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Aine, everybody.

Mica, they're our smallest choir in the competition.

Does that mean that they have to work harder to create the sound?

Yes, and I think they did it. The sound is very soft and sweet.

And what was lovely was those minor chords

that were coming in were just really nice.

-I liked that kind of jazzy blues stuff.

-Muyiwa.

When you have a choir of 30 people, 40 people, going before you,

and you feel, there's only eight of us, you can get rather nervous,

but I think the commitment they had to the song,

-once they got in their zone, was clear.

-Carrie.

I would have liked the arrangement to have been a little bit more simple

so that we could then really hear the blend.

This size group has to be about the blend. I loved the sincerity of it.

I'd say that, above everything else about you guys, it just felt

very simple, very sincere, in terms of your performance.

-I liked it.

-Thank you, Aine.

I'm just happy and grateful to the Almighty

that we were able to go out there

and give a good account of ourselves of a difficult arrangement.

I'm grateful to God and hugely proud of my singers.

Singing next is a community choir from East Sussex.

They take their name from their town. It's Lewes Sings Gospel.

We're here in Lewes, it's the county town.

We're sited in 1,000-year-old church, dating back from the Norman conquest,

and it's the best setting to sing this special sort of music.

There's something really special

about community choirs, where you have

people from all walks of life, all different backgrounds,

but when we come together, we're all saying the same thing.

Karen is firm, but very fair. She doesn't take any nonsense.

She pushes us to the point of perfection and it's amazing.

Our song is a cappella. Oh, Lord, I Know I've Been Changed.

# You know, the angels... #

You can really feel the emotion in it and I really hope everyone enjoys it.

# Ooh, ooh

# Ooh, ooh, ooh

# Ooh, ooh

# Ooh, ooh, ooh

# Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh

# Ooh, ooh

# Lord, I know I've been changed

# Lord, I know I've been changed

# Lord, I know I've been changed

# Cos the angels in heaven done sang my name

# Jordan's water is chilly and cold

# You know, the angels in heaven done sang my name

# Said it chilled my body but not my soul

# You know, the angels in heaven done sang my name

# If you don't believe I've been redeemed

# The angels in heaven done sang my name

# Then follow me down to Jordan's stream, that's where

# The angels in heaven done sang my name

# Oh, Lord

# I know I've been changed

# Lord, I know I've been changed

# Changed for you, Lord

# I know I've been changed

# Because those angels in heaven done sang my name

# I said those angels in heaven done sang my name

# Doo, doo, doo-doo, doo-doo

# Doo, doo, doo-doo, doo-doo

# Doo, doo, doo-doo, doo-doo

# Doo-doo-doo, doo-doo doo-doo, doo-doo

# Doo, doo-doo

# Doo-doo-doo, doo-doo doo-doo, doo-doo

# Doo, doo-doo

# The angels in heaven done sang my name

# I know I've been changed

# Lord, I know I've been changed

# Lord, I know I've been changed

# Because the angels in heaven done sang my name

# The angels in heaven done sang my name

# The angels in heaven done sang name. #

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

Lewes Sings Gospel.

Muyiwa, how did they do?

My toes are still tingling, I'm telling you.

This has proved positive that gospel music, or choir singing,

it's not a black thing, it's not a white thing,

it's a heart thing.

Their hearts and the song connected with my heart

and I'm like, "Yes, the angels in heaven sound my name."

APPLAUSE

-Carrie.

-Amazing discipline in terms of your singing.

I have to draw focus on your conductor, Karen Gibson.

I'm like, what does all this stuff mean?

-I want to know how you're doing that. It's fantastic.

-Mica.

I'm just going to tell you right now, that's what a choir is, OK?

Unbelievable. Moved me. This vocalist... Oh, my gosh!

Shocking. You, as well. Fabulous. Awesome.

Thank you, Lewes Sings Gospel.

How did it feel?

It felt relief but it felt really good

because the audience were really supportive.

The judges said some lovely things.

I'm never going to forget that audience.

Our final choir is from Barking in Essex.

With their version of the popular gospel song, Total Praise,

it's Living Faith Connections.

THEY SING

Living Faith Connections

started off in Africa, Nigeria,

and has gone around the world.

It's just a dynamic group of people sending forth the gospel

but we do it through music because that is our medium,

that is our ministry.

Evans is our music producer, he's music director,

he's fun, he's lovely, he's nice.

Yeah. And he's my husband, yeah.

He's a very dynamic leader.

He listens. You couldn't find a more encouraging human being.

Total Praise is a song, for me,

that I use to communicate with God, to worship.

It's like a prayer.

It's one of those things that, with each time you sing a song,

it always, always makes me well up.

It just puts me in that state of, you know what?

I've got my God sitting right next to me

and I don't know the right word to use.

Perfect worship, that's just it.

# Lord, I will lift

# My eyes to the hills

# Knowing my help

# Is coming from you

# Your peace you give me

# In time of the storm

# You are the source of my strength

# You are the strength of my life

# I lift my hands

# In total praise to you

# You are the source of my strength

# You are the strength of my life

# I lift my hands

# In total praise to you

# Amen, Amen

# Amen, Amen

# Amen, Amen

# Amen

# Amen. #

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

Living Faith Connections, everybody.

Mica, very well-known gospel song. Did they do it justice?

Yes, they did, and very, very powerful.

One of the strongest choirs today in terms of sound.

Sometimes, for me, it was a bit too loud,

but the blend is definitely there, for sure.

Muyiwa, Total Praise, did you totally believe them?

I'll tell you what, it's difficult for them because so many people

have done this song, but then I had to say to myself, close your eyes,

feel what Richard Small wanted out of this song, because

he wrote the song whilst he was losing his mother and his brother.

He was caring for both of them.

His response was, I will give, I will give total praise to God.

So I thought, close your eyes, can I feel that in there? Yes.

APPLAUSE

I felt like you took me on a journey and I felt that

the light and shade of it was absolutely beautiful.

Not too loud for me. It was great.

Thank you, judges, and thank you Living Faith Connections.

-Happy?

-Yay.

-Very happy.

I could feel the power of God while we were administering that song.

God was glorified and we just gave God all the praise.

-I couldn't agree more.

-Amen. Thank you, Jesus.

We've heard some fantastic, inspirational singing

from our six choirs. Next week, they'll have another chance

to impress before the judges have to make their decision.

It's not going to be easy.

So, judges, at this stage of the competition, give me your thoughts.

-Mica?

-Yes.

-Which choir gave a stand-out performance for you?

The Lewes Choir.

APPLAUSE

Muyiwa, which choir, at this stage, were you touched by most?

It's real difficult to say but I have to say,

the African Prince got it for me.

The Reapers Choir.

Carrie, which song is still ringing in your ears?

It would have to be Living Faith Connections.

Thank you, judges.

-Josie, how are the choirs holding up?

-Oh, wonderful.

You've all had a great time, haven't you?

I suspect they'll be slightly more nervous next week

when they are ever so close

and it's just in reach, that all-important trophy.

Which of our choirs will you be rooting for next week?

Do join us when all six choirs will sing another great gospel song

before the judges decide which of them will become

Songs Of Praise Gospel Choir of the Year.

Bye for now.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING