Sam Evans [Pablo Strong]

IF you want to find the beating heart of a community, look for its choir. Whether among sober-suited office workers or horny-handed labourers, whether it’s in hospitals, holiday camps, or even prison camps like those in Nazi Germany, amateur choirs emerge like mushrooms overnight. Who would have thought that Battersea Power Station could spawn its own choir? More of that later.

As we are seeing in The Choral – the gravely beautiful new film by Alan Bennett and Nicholas Hytner about a Northern choral society – a choir can reflect social, historical, and emotional cross-currents at many levels. And if the singers are amateurs, the role of their conductor – these days dignified by the grand title of music director – is of crucial importance. The departure of that person can precipitate a crisis.

That’s how we felt in Highgate Choral Society, when our much-loved music director Ronald Corp recently died after 42 years at the helm. A composer as well as a conductor, he had been a profound influence, steering the ship through crises, maintaining high standards of performance, and keeping everyone happy.

Founded in 1878, this was a choir with a grand history, so it was no surprise that there was a rush of applicants to succeed him. After much vetting, plus a trial run with the choir, the winner was a baritone named Sam Evans, one of the most versatile music directors in the business.

Finchley-based Sam started his singing career as a boy chorister in a parish church in Kingston, and was then invited to join the Tiffin Boys’ Choir. He won a choral scholarship to King’s College, Cambridge, and after graduating went on to train – and win prizes – at two London conservatoires.

He then plugged himself into the freelance professional circuit, singing in all the London churches which paid their singers, while also starting to run choral societies. And word began to spread about his all-round abilities.

When he was 21 his phone rang with the first of a number of lucky breaks: the elite Monteverdi Choir invited him aboard, and 24 years later he’s still singing with them.

Ralph Fiennes in the The Choral [Sony Pictures]

His phone also rang with the offer of an MD post at Riverside Opera, and then with offers from the Swedish Radio Choir and the Coro dell’Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome.

Meanwhile, he was busily teaching singing in schools including Eton, Westminster, and Highgate, where for five years he was head of vocal studies.

In action, Sam is witty and engaging, with a stream of tricks up his sleeve, but as we found out in our first rehearsal with him, he gets impressively quick results. Where does he draw the line between professionals and amateurs?

“I don’t. Working with Battersea Power Station Community Choir – which I started from scratch 10 years ago – I took literally anyone who walked in the door with no audition, and I still don’t audition people. I’ve taken the BPSCC from 12 people walking in, to a point where last week we had 80 singers plus Kylie Minogue, who came in and did a performance with us.

“My job is quite simply to help people sing better, and to remind them that we are in show business.”

Music directors used to bark out orders – making singers feel inadequate – but they are now increasingly imbued with a knowledge of how the vocal mechanism works. “I’ve discovered that certain things can make a big difference – like moving your face,” says Sam. “When you watch singers reading the score, you often feel they might as well be reading the football results. But when they activate their faces, other helpful anatomical things start going on in the voice as well.”

He adds: “I am not saying we shouldn’t strive to get the notes right. But the singer’s job is to take their code – their sheet music – and do with it what actors do with their script. An actor takes a code known as ‘writing’, and breathes life into it. We must do the same with ours.

“Our inherent human desire to communicate with others can lead us to add all the things the composer didn’t write down. The inflection, the colour, the nuance. We take our code, and make it human again. Then something magical can happen.”

The bottom line in all this is that Ron Corp was Sam Evans’ friend and mentor, and Sam intends to build on Ron’s legacy. Lest anyone should think that pulling funny faces heralds a diminution in seriousness, the menu for Sam’s first year in charge will be dominated by the music of Haydn, Dvořák, Gounod, and Schubert.

• Highgate Choral Society’s Christmas concert takes place at St Michael’s Church, South Grove, N6 6BJ, on December 6, 6-7pm. www.hcschoir.com/