Suzie Digby: Hitting the right note

By Lydia Mansi on December 1st 2009

Suzi Digby – or Lady Eatwell to use her proper title (which she, as a habit, does not) – opens the door to her sumptuous Boltons pied-à-terre and immediately warns me not to come too close. She’s coming down with a fever. Temperature withstanding, she is all loose golden ringleted, sky-scraper-heeled glamour as she sinks onto a giant cushion by the fire to keep warm.

I ask whether she’s still up to doing the interview. She is; after all,
as surely one of the busiest women in London, Digby is unlikely to
let a trifling thing like the onset of flu thwart her packed-like-sardines schedule.

When we meet, Digby is one week away from staging the first of a series of five Christmas concerts with Voce, the amateur chamber choir she directs, conducts and co-founded in 2003. The term amateur,
though technically accurate, belies the fact that its members are the cream of non-professional singers, many coming straight to Digby, via rigorous auditions, from Oxbridge’s choral groups. The A-word is also suggestive of local church halls; Voce, by contrast, has just returned from a tour of France, and is about to sing at the surprise birthday celebrations of Sir David Willcocks at King’s College Cambridge where he was once musical director, as well as perform its Christmas concert at Grosvenor Chapel. This is no ordinary amateur chamber group. And to prove it, they only have five Monday nights to rehearse for all five concerts.
How are they shaping up? “Well, we’re probably the best amateur chamber choir in London. At least, we’re said to be – I don’t want to blow my own trumpet! We’ve got a waiting list of 150 to audition. There are 35 of us – all young, attractive, talented and sociable. So if you don’t like what you hear, at least it’s easy on the eye!” she quips. “They put
up with a lot of me shouting, but they’re very fast learners.”
I cannot imagine her shouting, I say; there’s nothing harried about
the articulate and considered woman before me. Digby laughs, but
good-humouredly assures me that it’s been known. Nonetheless, she
is a consummate professional, having worked with literally thousands
of choirs all over the world, and if she works her singers hard, it’s with
the sole intention of providing a superlative experience. “I want them
to get the richest possible experience of the choral tradition. I bring in other conductors – we have one of the world’s top people for gospel choirs who works with us. Not any old person, but the best.”

There is something uniquely joyful about group singing, I suggest to Digby; unsurprisingly she agrees: “Singing is the only way you can express a common emotion. That’s why on the football terraces, you have singing, because it’s not recreational, is it? It’s a necessity – the only way you can unite is through song. The slaves sung as a survival mode – it was also a way of passing your mother tongue to the next generation – and so human beings sing to unite in a common voice, whether it’s to go to war, to pray or for political reasons. It’s terribly important, and that’s why it gives you the shudder down your spine. It’s also an amazing way of understanding other cultures where the spoken word can’t do it.”

You can see then, why Digby was perfect for the role of judge on
the BBC’s 2007 hit programme, Last Choir Standing. Her passion for
the highest quality is self-evident, she’s a seasoned adjudicator of choirs, and there is also her innate kindness and abhorrence at humiliation. She takes me through the technicalities, the palates of colour, the range, the dynamics which make one choir stand out from another, but it’s her insistence on bringing out the best in people that was paramount to
her winning turn as TV arbitrator. “Even if participants don’t get very
far, they have to be pleased they’ve come, and I have to give them some way to improve. That’s my job. It’s not to humiliate them and send them away with their tail between their legs.”

To the shows detractors who accused it of dumbing down, she has the perfect rejoinder: Last Choir Standing’s lasting impact was to increase the number of registered choirs by 25 per cent. “You need Aunt Mabel who goes off to her local choral society, you need your cool gangland choirs, you need your can’t-sing choirs, you need the top rate chamber choirs where we are still the best in the world. So those purists who say it’s dumbing down are missing the point. And people who say choirs are elitist, are missing the point. It’s important to feed the whole spectrum.” She’s hoping that the series will be re-commissioned after the recession;
it proved the most expensive reality series of all time, but its popularity was undeniable: viewing figures peaked at six million.

The removal of humiliation in singing is one of Digby’s driving forces and partly accounts for her launching The Voices Foundation charity in 1993. She had returned from living in Hong Kong for 12 years,  discovered that teaching of music in British schools was woefully under par and vowed to do something. “It’s extraordinary – after 17 years, we’ve created systemic change. From childhood, there were two things I was obsessed with. One was the unpopular girls at school, and I’ve discovered it’s an instinct – I’m drawn to the vulnerable. I was always making friends with the unpopular girls, and it’s the same thing with children. I work a lot with pre-puberty children who present with behavioural problems, and I love them. The other thing is, I’ve always sung, and those things came together. I used singing to make people feel better about themselves – it’s not about making people do music, it’s about using the only thing I have. It happens it’s the best tool in the world.”

And so Digby did a nine month feasibility study; she raised all the money herself, she saw the Secretary for Education, and has seen each one since (“I’m sure the civil servants roll their eyes when I come along, because I have all these ideas, they probably think, ‘Oh god, more work for us!’”); she talked to anyone and everyone to create a national organisation which would go into schools and give teachers the skills to teach music. The year-long programmes are non-elective – every pupil must sing – and the only rule is that nobody must laugh. Did she meet with resistance from the teachers? “Fear and scepticism were the prevailing attitudes I met with.

So I convert them – that’s my speciality. And I can make a stone sing – look after the weak link and the whole group will blossom.”
The results have been staggering; the charity’s work has affected social change – the pilot school she worked with is now in the top 300 primary schools having been on special measures, and it is, she says, almost exclusively down to the bonding effects of singing. So why are people – adults particularly – so scared to sing? “It’s the most exposing thing you can do, because it’s direct communication from your soul. Usually the parents do the most harm. They say, ‘Oh my George isn’t musical, he’s sporty’. Or the music teacher says, ‘Don’t sing, mime’. And bang, the psychological door closes. Who wants to be laughed at?”

Digby takes an endearing delight in not only her work, but those she works with. But none more so than her children, at whose mention she beams with pride. Her 24-year old son is a rising star at JP Morgan, while her daughter, 22, has both a first in economics and is a cellist, bassist and vocalist in the up-and-coming indie band Patch William (the next
big thing, according to Stephen Fry). She talks with great fondness
of bringing them up in Hong Kong at “a golden time”, when Digby
herself was working as on an arts television programme, as a radio broadcaster and a teacher. So they have evidently inherited her work ethic? “I think that all that early music in their lives paid off – the
focus and the self-esteem.” For now, she is looking forward to the season of Christmas concerts, and showcasing Voce’s anthology of the traditional and the playful, the sacred and the secular. “And we’ll send the audience out on Jingle Bells. All I ever want to do is make people’s lives better through music and raise a smile.”

The Voce Chamber Choir Christmas Extravaganca, 7.30pm, Saturday 12 December, Grosvenor Chapel, South Audley Street, London W1K 2PA. For tickets or more info visit vocechamberchoir.org.uk; for information on the Voices Foundation visit voices.org.uk

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