About Milton Keynes Youth Choir
MKYC was founded in 1997 with a grant from the National Lottery and originally shared its Musical Director, John Gibbons, with the Milton Keynes Chorale. They operate as a charity and rely on help from parents to run the choir and provide taxi services for their singers.
They are an auditioned choir for upper voices age 8 to 18.
Craig McLeish has been MD for the choir since 2010 and the choir derives great benefit from his teaching, conducting, arranging and composing.
Singers come from a wide area round Milton Keynes (they attend many different schools – amongst our current membership we include a couple of home-schooled singers, as well as singers from local primary and secondary schools and a few from independent schools outside MK).
About half of the singers play instruments, so have experience reading music. Craig, therefore, does a mixture of teaching by ear and learning from the music, giving the non-instrumentalists an opportunity to learn to read scores and develop sight-singing skills.
The choir rehearses for an hour a week during term time. They aim to perform at least one concert in the Autumn and in the Summer terms, take part in festivals during the Spring term.
We aim to set subs at an affordable rate for parents/carers, so our weekly income does not cover our costs and we rely on fundraising to remain viable and to pay for new music, concerts and festival entries.
mkyc.org.uk
mkyc.chair@hotmail.co.uk
Milton Keynes Youth Choir Registered charity number 1075236
