News & Views

Music That Stays: discovering local carol traditions

AO News, Audition Oracle – Wed 31 Dec 2025 @ 6:09

People heartily singing together in a community space 

 
As we hurtle towards the new year, I find myself mid-move to a part of the UK I know very little about.

This is not a move to a dream home or long-imagined destination, but a temporary relocation to manage relationships and life responsibilities. Being able to work largely remotely made the move possible, even if the logistics have been far from simple; emotionally, it has opened up something more unexpected. I have always enjoyed new beginnings. Starting again often feels quietly exciting and, perhaps surprisingly, relatively free of expectation.
 

Arriving somewhere new

My new base is Belper, Derbyshire. I have no real sense yet of what this area holds for me musically. On paper, there is plenty nearby: Buxton Opera House, home to both the Buxton International Festival and the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival, and Sheffield, where English Touring Opera is in the process of relocating its base. But proximity to activity is not the same as knowing a place — wherever in the world you happen to be based. If you are in these parts, do drop me an email at [email protected]. It is always a pleasure to meet new people and begin to understand a local scene from the inside.
 

Stumbling into song

To escape the relentlessness of juggling personal life, AO, and making the house habitable, we came away for a few days to Shropshire over Twixmas to walk, see ancient trees, and rest — including a short detour to the Candelabra Oak in neighbouring Herefordshire. In the way these things often happen, I stumbled into something musical entirely by accident.

Stepping into a local pub, hearty carols poured from a packed-out side room and greeted us in the hallway. My eyes lit up.

Any singer reading this will know December’s particular madness well: oratorio, concert and service after service, right through to Christmas morning. Gone are the days when my own final run-up to Christmas included multiple Carols by Candlelight performances at the Royal Albert Hall. The highlight of that punishing schedule was always the moment when Steven Devine would silence the choir and we would sit, listening to a packed-out hall sing Away in a Manger. Magical. Then I would leg it to midnight mass before crawling back into central London for the morning service. No doubt many of you are still recovering from similarly relentless schedules.
 

Strangely familiar?

As I settled in and attempted to join O Come, O Come Emmanuel and While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night, something felt off. Familiar fragments of melody and lyric surfaced, but they did not quite align with what my musical memory anticipated. For a brief moment, I questioned my own memory, as this way of singing was clearly second nature to everyone else. I had not forgotten the carols; I had stepped into a different local tradition — something the regulars around me were only too happy to explain.

Back at our accommodation, with curiosity piqued, I went looking for what I had just experienced and found the Castle Carols project in Bishop’s Castle:
https://castlecarols.com/castle-carols-2/

That page, in turn, alerted me to something closer to my new home: a long-running carol-singing tradition associated with Sheffield and North Derbyshire:
https://castlecarols.com/the-sheffield-carols/
 

Where these songs went

Local carol traditions are sustained through communal memory and participation—often learned by ear and carried forward across generations. As church music and liturgy became increasingly standardised in the nineteenth century, many local variants fell out of regular church use. Rather than disappearing, some communities carried them into secular and community spaces, where they continued to be sung, remembered, and passed on.

What I love most is the reminder that tradition is rarely one neat, fixed thing. It is messy and local and lived. It evolves. It travels. It splits into versions. It survives because people decide it matters.
 

Closer to home

So here we are, with the new year not yet rung in, and a new home base already beginning to shape how I listen. I still love the carols and settings I grew up with, but this experience has deepened my interest in the local paths music takes — how it emerges, shifts, and settles in different places.

I would love to hear about yours.

Are there musical traditions where you live that outsiders rarely encounter? Songs, carols, choirs, gatherings, rituals, or ways of making music that are rooted in place? If so, do tell us. Reply to this email and share a tradition local to you (and where it is kept alive). I would love to learn what exists beyond my own musical map.

And yes, I will admit to a small note of disappointment that I did not get to sing the descant to O Come, All Ye Faithful even once this Christmas. There is always next year.

Wishing you all a wonderful New Year’s Eve and a very happy New Year, wherever you are in the world.
  

Melanie 

Founder, Audition Oracle



PS If you know of local musical gatherings, traditions or seasonal rituals, whether close to home or further afield, I am all ears.

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Who’s in the audience today?

AO News, Audition Oracle – Thu 18 Dec 2025 @ 8:44

Older couple enjoying the theatre

 

Who’s in the audience today?

Before the interval lights went down at a recent performance, I found myself chatting to the woman seated next to me. Half the show had already been experienced, and I asked a simple question: how are you enjoying the opera?


Sally is 76. She spoke with real enthusiasm about the production, praising the voices and adding, entirely unprompted, that she didn’t mind the modern dress at all. That alone made me curious. So I asked another question, one I’ve increasingly come to value.


What brought you here today?

Sally grew up listening to old-school musical theatre in the family home — the kind many of us can still hear in our heads decades later. Later came Andrew Lloyd Webber, and operetta such as Die Lustige Witwe. For Sally (and for many), those shows formed a tangible bridge to opera.


In her twenties, living in London, a boyfriend took her to the opera. That first visit marked the beginning of a relationship with opera that has now lasted over 55 years.


Compound interest at its best.


These days, living near Grantham, Sally enjoys seeing opera more locally, in part because it’s more affordable. We find ourselves at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham. She also likes to be close to the action. She knows she could sit in the balcony in London, but she wants a good seat. We’re in the stalls.

Cinema screenings are another way she and her friends keep opera in their lives now. Not the same as live, she says, but good enough. And crucially, accessible.

I asked Sally how she finds opera in its original language. “Oh, I prefer it,” she exclaims. She goes on to explain that she was a language teacher and speaks several languages, and that she loves recognising words and working out the meaning as she listens. It’s also worth noting: Sally doesn’t sing, and she doesn’t play any musical instruments.

Listening to her, I am reminded that many of us start in similar places — musical theatre as a first doorway, then operetta, then opera. Different generations. Familiar pathways.


After the show, I spoke to Liz, 82. She and Sally had come as part of a larger group that enjoys live theatre and music, travelling together for over an hour to attend the weekday matinee. Her eyes were still brimming with tears long after the cast had left the stage.

What struck me most was this: when Sally and Liz come to the opera, their bodies arrive carrying decades of emotional investment. They have seen many productions of La Bohème. They know the story inside out and have shed many tears before. They take their seats already primed to respond emotionally to an opera they know well.

For us as singers and instrumentalists, it’s a gift we sometimes forget: audiences don’t require perfection to be moved. They need commitment — to the music, the story, and the moment. We are enough more often than we realise.

Everyone I spoke to at that performance commented on the power of music to shift them out of their current state. To transport them. To move them towards feeling something different to whatever they arrived carrying. That is no small thing to offer another human being in the middle of an ordinary week.

And it’s also why I want to encourage something very simple over the coming weeks.

If you find yourself at a performance, try talking to the person seated next to you — mid-interval, post-show, or before the interval lights go down. Not to network. Not to gather data. Just to ask one human question:


What brought you here today?

Some of the most beautiful, ordinary and extraordinary conversations I’ve had started as a very simple exchange. In this case, when I came back to my seat in the interval and squeezed past, Sally joked that she was glad I hadn’t returned clutching an ice cream — she’d have been very jealous. For me, that was an invitation to talk.

Sometimes conversations end there. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they make the day.


If you do end up having one of those conversations and feel like noting it, you could use #WhosInTheAudienceToday. Not to label anyone. Just to notice them.

 

Melanie Lodge
Founder, Audition Oracle

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