Childrenʼs International Voices of Enfield

4th December 2014

by Dr. June Keyte

Registered Charity Number – 1158828

Six Choirs for Children & Young People ages 4 – 24 www.childrensinternationalvoices.co.uk Our Patron Dr John Rutter CBE

Dr. June Keyte MBE founded Children’s International Voices of Enfield some 23 years ago with just 8 or 9 singers aged 8-10. We now we have over 100 choristers as well as 25 who have all graduated in Music at University or Conservatoire or are current undergraduates! Our children and young people, aged 4 to 24+ represent over 45 different Nations. We rehearse fortnightly on a Sunday afternoon in the Burford Centre, of the Palmers Green United Reformed Church, Fox Lane, Palmers Green N13 4AL. There is no audition and if you love singing please give us a call on 020 8882 7404 to tell us a little about yourself and find out the times our 6 different choirs rehearse.

We have made 10 CDs, with a further recording planned this Christmas of our RutterFest Music which we will be performing in our Christmas concerts. Dr. John Rutter CBE, the internationally renowned Composer, is the Patron of our choir. He has kindly agreed again to donate his time, expertise and recording equipment to produce this CD. What a wonderful opportunity for our choristers to work with such an eminent composer!

We have toured abroad to the Czech Republic, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Wales, Switzerland, Italy and Germany. We are currently planning our next tour to Norway which we hope will take place in the Autumn of 2015.

Every alternate year, we have a Residential Weekend at the Pro Corda Centre at Leiston Abbey, a beautiful, specialist Music Centre in Suffolk. On many occasions we study the works of a single composer, including, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies CH CBE, Dr John Rutter CBE and Alexander L’ Estrange. We have prepared works by Benjamin Britten in honour of the 100th Anniversary year of his Birth. We returned in May 2014 for the most wonderful Study Weekend with specialist singing classes by Vetta Wise from Cape Town. Our concert on the Sunday afternoon was in aid of St. Elizabeth’s Hospice based in Suffolk.

On Christmas Day 2011 and 2012 we sang, at the invitation of Dr. John Rutter CBE, in his BBC 2 Television Programme “A Musical Nativity with John Rutter”. We recorded in the beautiful 16th Century Dorchester Abbey near Oxford with the International Canadian Baritone Soloist Gerald Finley and the young professional Aurora Orchestra of London.

In January 2014 we were invited to sing the World Premier of Give me Wings, a work written by Dr. John Rutter for the Education World Forum held in Westminster Central Hall, London. The then Minister of Education Mr. Michael Gove spoke enthusiastically about Children’s International Voices of Enfield...

‘May I first of all thank both John Rutter and the Young Enfield Singers from whom we heard just a few moments ago; it was an inspirational few minutes’ he went on to say ‘I hope that over the course of the next few days, the image and the sound of those young people, working together, to produce something beautiful, will inspire us to ensure we live up to the high standards that they, as children, have set for us as adults.’