The much-loved conductor is hosting a series of spontaneous choirs, where everyone is invited and everyone can sing.

Have you ever wanted to sing in a choir but been afraid to dip your toe in the water? Well, here’s your chance. Conductor Richard Gill will be hosting a series of flash mob choirs at City Recital Hall in Sydney this year. Participants who sign up for the choral gatherings will be contacted by SMS with a date and time a few days before each event. The spontaneous choirs will gather for 40 minutes to sing together – a quick taste of what it’s like to sing in a group ­– before dispersing again.

What will participants get out of the event? “First, I hope they enjoy it,” Gill tells Limelight. “I hope they enjoy singing together and, second, I hope that they discover that they can sing.”

This is obviously something that Gill feels passionate about. “A lot of people have been told at some stage in their lives they can’t sing,” he says. “And normally that happens at school and it often happens in primary school, when they don’t get into a choir or something happens and someone says, ‘well, you really can’t sing.’ And that is probably the most wicked thing you can say to a child.”

“It’s worse than telling a child it can’t spell or it can’t read or it can’t write,” he explains. “Telling a child ‘you can’t sing’ is absolute insanity – it’s damaging, actually, because they can see that all the kids who are singing are having a really good time.”

And the final thing Gill hopes participants will take home from the experience? “They’ll want to do more.”

The Flash Mob Choir is completely free and open to anybody, regardless of experience or level of musical education, and Gill wants to encourage those who may be self-conscious about their singing ability. “Just turn up,” he says. “Turn up and take a risk. It’s like putting your toe in the ocean – once you get into the ocean it’s fantastic.”

While the songs chosen for each event are a surprise, they will be accessible. “It will be a popular song that most people will know,” Gill says. “It’s not classical or Baroque or anything like that at all – it will be a popular song that everyone will know and it’ll be upbeat.”

The Flash Mob Choir events will be 40 minutes long, and held at different times and dates to encourage a variety of participants to attend. “We’ll start with a meet and greet,” Gill says. “We’ll do some vocal warm-ups and some rhythmic works and some clapping and some chanting and some silly-buggers. And then we’ll get on with the business of the song. We’ll sing it, and then we’ll perfect it. In 40 minutes it will all happen.”

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