New Year and it’s all change for Downley Descants, we have renamed to Downley Voices which reflects the fact that we are now a truly mixed choir. We have also moved the venue of our rehearsals to St James’ Church which is more accessible and has plenty of car parking as opposed to Sunnybank Church where we started in 2012 and continued to sing there until last Autumn. Many thanks to Sunnybank for hosting us for twelve years and being so welcoming and accommodating to us, we will be forever grateful.

Although the name has changed, we are still your local community choir. We hold this sense of community with great importance as we always have. It has been proven that singing is good for your health, both mental and physical and, while we have great fun at rehearsals we do work hard to be the best we can be in our concerts through the year. We achieve this with the help of our highly talented and professional music team. We are totally different to “franchise” choirs who sing to a backing track and pay a huge amount for the privilege. Some must even buy their own music on top. We have a musical director and an accompanist so sing to live music. Our subscription rates are kept to the minimum to cover our costs and donate towards local good causes from the proceeds of our concerts. There is no requirement for an audition, and we don’t charge for the music! If you want to join in with our fun rehearsals, why not join us for a couple of weeks to see how much you enjoy it. At our first rehearsal, four new people came along, and all left with smiles on their faces saying they would be back next week. Just let us know beforehand and we will make you most welcome. Just contact Lyn on 07974026213 or grannyandbobby@tiscali.co.uk and tell us you are coming.

We are developing a new website (downleyvoices.org) with the generous help of Downley Old School Community Association and we must thank them for this.

At our recent highly successful Christmas Concert we raised £750 for Wycombe Homeless Connection which was topped up to £1000 by a generous donation from an anonymous member of our choir. There was even a mini pantomime which seemed to go down well with the audience (Oh Yes it Did!)

We were asked to sing at The Heights Nursing Home in November to entertain the residents. I think, generally, they enjoyed our performance and even joined in with singing some of the songs.

2025 will be an exciting year for Downley Voices as we have been asked to be the guests at a Reading Male Voice Choir concert in June. This choir is one of the premier male voice choirs in the south of England and we feel very honoured to have been asked.

Bob Cook (Bass)