Top 10 Pandemic Pivot No. 3:
VOCES8, Live from London

The coronavirus pandemic has seen performers becoming stage managers and camera crews, but the singers of UK-based choral foundation VOCES8 went one step further and reinvented themselves as impresarios as well. Running for ten weeks from August 1 to October 3, their Live from London Festival showcased the cream of British vocal ensembles ranging in size from the Gesualdo Six to The Sixteen, even reaching across the pond to include Chanticleer in San Francisco.

Among the first events to manage the switch from free to pay-per-stream, the Festival brought nine ensembles together in a spirit of mutual support and in many cases represented first performances since the imposition of national restrictions.

Early days of lockdown

VOCES8 is an acclaimed eight-person choir, annual budget around $1.6 million, that normally enjoys a regular London season and international touring program of around 200 concerts per year as well as managing an educational foundation. As the UK endured a particularly onerous lockdown from March 16 until well into June, it was among the first arts organizations to step up. “Our first instinct was to try and provide some kind of engagement for people at home in lockdown whose weekly routine would involve singing in their own choir,” says Artistic Director Barnaby Smith, who with his brother Paul, the company’s CEO, founded VOCES8 in 2005.

VOCES8 on the steps of their home base at St. Anne and St. Agnes Church

They came up with “Live from Home,” a series they describe as “offering something every day at 2 pm across 80 days [of lockdown]—virtual singing, interviews, and stuff for kids to sing at home.”

Following discussions with the UK’s Department of Culture, Media and Sport, VOCES8 reached out to other professional vocal groups to form a consensus and lobby the government to address the impact of the ban on singing on their respective communities. The group also realized it could help others by offering the use of its space at the historic, Christopher Wren-designed St. Anne and St. Agnes Church in the heart of the City of London.

Taking a risk

Through its foundation, it had already purchased the technology to run the VOCES8 Digital Academy, a program to help schoolteachers unable to physically bring their choirs together during lockdown. Outfitted with the ability to record and stream concerts, VOCES8 decided to take a chance and launch digital festival; with no actual budget as such they figured they’d need to sell 2,000 season tickets at roughly $110 a piece to break even. “If we’d sold that many tickets every artist would have walked away with a decent fee and we’d have covered the costs of the cameras,” says Paul Smith.

VOCES8 encouraged each of the ensembles to cross-market on their websites and social channels to help promote the Festival. When tickets went on sale in late July, they flew out of the door and it wasn’t long before the group found itself in a position to upgrade its equipment by around $100,000. “Wow, we’ve got 4,000 bums on seats here, we can do something really special,” recalls Barnaby. “So, we invested, and we now virtually have a television studio in the church.”

Academy of Ancient Music rehearses at the VOCES8 Center

Retraining four or five of singers as camera crew, by the end of the Festival VOCES8 could credit over 30 non-performers with getting the program from page to screen. “Because you have singers behind the camera as well as in front of it, there’s hopefully a more visceral connection with what it’s like to sing in a choir,” says Barnaby. “Empowering others to become retailers, connecting their audiences with the festivals, we ended up with arts organizations all over the world selling tickets in a way that earned them money as well.”

Reaping—and sharing—the rewards

All artists, whether big names or less well-known, received an equal share of the ticket income, with roughly one third each going to the artists, the arts organisation involved in retailing the Festival, and the VOCES8 foundation to support production costs. Subsequently, the foundation has put ten percent of its share into a fund specifically to support work in the areas of diversity, accessibility, equality and inclusion in choral music. All in all, Live from London raised around half-a-million dollars. Dividing around 5,000 season tickets across nine individual concerts, the Festival can claim to have sold around individual 45,000 seats and, counting repeat views, concerts were watched over 85,000 times. If one assumes the average choral concert attracts an audience of 850, the Festival can claim to have attracted ten times as many eyeballs.

The subsequent Live from London: Christmas, a festival of 16 concerts running from December 1 to January 6, is a mark of that success and is available to view until January 15.