Projects By Earthly Voices Musical Director – Bringing Communities Together In Harmony

Perhaps that is what motivated Jeremy Avis, local choir Earthly Voices’ musical director, to inject some international voices into their latest concert on July 7th in Weybridge, that as well as his background writing music for refugees in Malawi.

Working closely with Elmbridge CAN, the community group which supports refugees in the area, Avis is running workshops for displaced individuals and injecting their talents into the choir’s next concert in early July.

Avis has extensive worldwide experience, having studied and worked in West Africa and the Middle East not to mention performing as a soloist himself. He recently toured worldwide with Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre as Musical Director for their production of The Merchant of Venice and is regularly asked to perform in festivals and on such stages as The National Theatre on London’s Southbank.

However it was football that sparked Jeremy’s imagination so along with musical partner Rebecca Askew, he set up Goalmouth, (www.goal-mouth.org) a UNHCR funded project which had them composing a musical in Malawi to build bridges between refugees and the local Malawian population. This idea came out of a chance conversation about integration with the head of UNHCR in Botswana some years earlier.

“He said they were looking for an event that would help with the relations between the Zimbabweans and the Malawians who lived in the town next door to the camp” remembers Jeremy. With the South Africa World cup looming, Jeremy soon had his eureka moment to write a fantasy football musical to address this issue.

“Football and singing together: what could be a better recipe for bringing potentially warring communities together in harmony ?“ he muses.
“My god when the idea actually happened it was electric and set the course of our (Goalmouth’s) work for the years to come”

Concert In Weybridge By Earthly Voices – Esher’s Community Choir

Grants to support the concert have kindly been received from RC Sheriff Trust and Julia Cripps, recently deceased member of choir to whom this concert is dedicated.