Simon Askey was in hospital when he heard Gareth Malone was forming a choir. Now he’s performing Bach’s St John Passion with world-class singers
Gareth Malone’s Easter Passion
Good Friday 11.15am BBC1
When Simon Askey responded to an advert asking for singers to audition for a Gareth Malone-led choir, he assumed it would be a gathering of cheerful amateurs similar to previous groups overseen by the TV choirmaster.
Not quite. The 62-year-old retired transport manager and self-described “hobbyist” singer from Caerphilly quickly learnt after being selected that he would actually be joining worldclass soloists, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and BBC singers. Askey and seven other untrained singers, also picked by Malone, are taking part in a filmed concert performance of Bach’s famous choral work, the St John Passion, which is known for its vocal complexity and highly technical sections.
“It was quite a shock, to be honest,” Askey recalls now. “There was a great amount of trepidation once we realised what lay ahead.” The historic composition – first performed in Leipzig on Good Friday 300 years ago and now forming part of three programmes around the anniversary – tells one of history’s most powerful stories, Bach’s musical interpretation of the Easter story and the Passion of Christ.
Askey joined Caerphilly’s male voice choir 17 years ago and singing has been a constant in his life, particularly following a diagnosis of severe allergic asthma six years ago, which forced him to take early retirement. He’s since been hospitalised several times and takes a cocktail of drugs every day to help manage the condition.
Then last year he saw Malone’s advert on Facebook asking for enthusiastic amateurs, and while reticent about applying, Askey was encouraged to do so by his wife.
“This time last year I was in hospital on two occasions for a week, so I was very much aware that winter is a bad time for me,” he says. “But my wife told me in no uncertain terms to go for it.”
A few weeks later he found himself at the auditions clutching a score as Malone asked him to sight-read a piece from the St John Passion. Askey admits he was a bag of nerves. “But I must have done something right, because here I am,” he smiles.
He formed an immediate bond with his seven fellow choir members, who include a budding young singer turned drag artist from Port Talbot and a flute-playing amateur footballer from Cardiff. None had had any classical training and were daunted by the scale of what lay ahead. They will be staging the performance in English rather than German, to bring Bach’s musical interpretation of the Easter story to a wider audience.
