About Steel City Choristers

A choir of boys, girls and adults

Steel City Choristers is an independent and innovative choir that brings children and adults together to sing to the highest musical standards in the Cathedral tradition.

• Our Choristers are boys with treble voices and girls of all ages
• Our teenage boys are known as our Changing Voices
• Our adult singers are known as the Steel City Clerks.

We welcome boys and girls aged 6-18 regardless of their background or prior musical experience. Our adults are experienced singers with excellent sight reading skills. There are no fees for singing with us.

Our multi-age approach creates a community of singers in which those with more experience serve as inspiring role models to help apprentice our younger and less experienced singers.

A travelling choir

We rehearse at St John the Baptist church, Owlerton, but we take our singing to different churches and communities around the city. We serve Sheffield and the surrounding area, and want to see more people accessing and experiencing the joys of choral music.

In line with our roots in the English choral repertoire, the majority of our engagements are leading worship in churches. We also enjoy singing for a variety of non-church events, including to help raise funds for other local charities.

We take the choir on trips and tours away from Sheffield to expand our musical horizons and help deepen relationships across the choir community.

We have sung in a wide range of different locations and venues including cathedrals across the country and local churches of many different denominations, as well concert and community halls, a theme park and even a community allotment!

If you would like to host Steel City Choristers, please contact us at enquiries@steelcitychoristers.org.uk.

An advocate for the power of music

We believe in the power of music to change lives. High quality choral music has a transcendent quality that brings a wide range of benefits to the listener.

This is recognised and reflected in many patterns of sacred worship – and we are privileged to be able to share our music as part of the worship in an increasing number of churches. These benefits are also enjoyed by many people in non-religious settings. Wherever we sing, we know our music can help meet people’s emotional and spiritual needs.

We help our choristers understand the music they sing and the role that it has played in Christian worship over the centuries. We also help them appreciate the different types of churches in which they sing.

While we warmly welcome children and adult singers of all faiths and none, our choristers and clerks need to be comfortable participating in Christian acts of worship.

An innovative partner

We enjoy developing partnerships through which we can offer our choral music to communities who would not otherwise have access to it. We are always looking for new communities who would like to host us. 

In some situations this will require us to develop a new and innovative approach. Sometimes this will mean working together to plan a project and apply for funding. We aim to be sensitive to the needs of our hosts and work together to select music and design events accordingly.

We are delighted to have formed a partnership with a choir called Cambridge University Schola Cantorum which was founded in much the same way as Steel City Choristers. CUSC is an excellent choir that is passionate about sharing its love of choral music with as wide an audience as possible – it has both a very active social media presence and a keen interest in community outreach.

A pioneering model

As individual churches and even some cathedrals struggle to maintain their own choir, our aim is to pioneer a new model for sustaining the all-age English choral tradition. A viable choir needs people to sing, people to sing for, and money to cover its costs.

We recruit singers because:

• our intensive musical education is free and first class, and offers the opportunity to sing a board repertoire at a high standard in a wide range of churches and other venues;
• our culture puts people at the centre of what we do – including through the youth work in our rehearsals and our social events – meaning they have fun, build friendships and feel valued;
• we are independent and don’t sing every Sunday morning, which means we are more accessible to those who want to sing but who don’t want to leave their current church in order to join a choir, as well as to those who don’t want to join a church at all.

We have plenty of people to sing for because:

• churches and other communities invite us to sing for them, which means that we are not responsible for attracting a congregation or raising an audience; and
• we always tailor our offer to meet the needs of the churches and communities we sing for, so they feel grateful and well served.
  

We charge no fees, but raise money because:

• Choristers’ parents value our free musical education, and although under no obligation to give to the charity, many do give generously;
• the organisations for whom we sing usually make a donation to thank us for our singing;
• individual supporters give generously to support our charitable aims; and
• grant funders recognise the educational and/or artistic value of our work.

Our origin

Steel City Choristers was founded following the unexpected closure of Sheffield Cathedral Choir in July 2020.

Members of the former cathedral choir were committed to continuing to sing together and to keeping choral music alive in the city. Out of the strength of their community came the vision to establish Steel City Choristers as a choir that sings to the standard associated with our country’s cathedrals, but which does so out and about around the city.

Many new members have since joined the choir; yet the cathedral tradition remains at the heart of our approach and the music we sing.