Wells Angels
Our New Regular Donor Scheme
Regular support is best. It helps the Trust to plan ahead, reduces our administration costs, and therefore we can support more children. Our Wells Angels are a special group of supporters who want to help the Choristers for the long term. You can become a Wells Angel by setting up a regular gift for as little as £10 a month.
Please read more below or download a PDF brochure to discover more about the scheme as well as the range of donor levels and the angelic recognition that comes with each! To become an Angel, please download the application form here. This can be completed online and emailed back to us, or you can print it out to complete by hand and send it to us by post.
Meeting HRH on a visit to Wells
A Gala Concert at St James’s Palace in the presence of HRH
a message from our royal patron
Wells Cathedral Chorister Trust is working hard to ensure that any musical child can benefit from the wonderful start in life that being a chorister provides. Your support to help build the endowment fund to make this happen is invaluable. It will ensure that no gifted child is excluded from the opportunity to flourish in a world of music and song.
Thank you.
HRH The Countess of Wessex GCVO
The famous ‘scissor’ arches in the nave of Wells Cathedral
giving gifted children a chance
Wells Cathedral Choir offers unrivalled opportunities to musical children. It trains them to sing in a magnificent building where the music is world-class.
We want to give this wonderful chance to young children from all backgrounds, because talent crops everywhere.
Singing in the beautiful historic stalls in the Quire
“Choristership: the single greatest leg-up a child can be given in life.”
Alexander Armstrong
Comedian, Actor, TV Presenter and former chorister
Many families cannot afford to pay for the all-round education that a Wells Cathedral chorister gets. Wells Cathedral Chorister Trust wants to raise enough money to make sure that no deserving child misses out on this unique chance.
To help secure the future of the Cathedral Choir, the Trust’s goal is to double its existing fund to £2 million by 2020 and £20 million by 2030.
On tour - visiting the Forbidden City in Beijing
Each year, despite having the raw musical talent, some children are unable to take up their place as chorister at Wells due to a lack of money.
over a thousand years of music
According to an international panel of experts, Wells Cathedral boasts the world’s finest choir of adults and children. It’s certainly been going a long time - since 909, to be precise. Today, the Choir consists of 36 choristers - 18 boys and 18 girls - plus 12 men, or Vicars Choral, as they are known.
The choristers recording another CD
The Choir is the at heart of the Cathedral’s worship, singing music ranging from the medieval to the present day. Many of today’s finest composers write for Wells Cathedral Choir as it is at the forefront of new music; Wells Cathedral choristers sing tomorrow’s music today, keeping the English choral tradition alive.
The young choristers gain enormous benefit from their experiences beyond the daily services. They broadcast regularly and their recordings over recent years have won international acclaim.
On the playing field at the Cathedral School
Two of the choir’s recordings were selected as Editor’s Choice in Gramophone Magazine, which described the choir as “probably the finest English cathedral choir at the moment”. This accolade has led to invitations to tour worldwide, including to continental Europe, Hong Kong, and Beijing.
What makes a Wells Chorister training so special?
All choristers have lessons on at least one instrument
The choristers are totally immersed from day one in singing with professional musicians. In daily rehearsals, and by following the example of boys and girls not much older than themselves, they learn to perform as professional singers at the highest standard. All this whilst being educated at Wells Cathedral School - unique in the world as being a cathedral choir school, one of the UK’s five specialist music schools, and a co-educational mainstream independent school.
By the time they ‘retire’ at 13 or 14 they will have skills, artistic sensitivity, and an understanding of teamwork that will set them up for whatever they choose to do in life.
As the actor and former chorister, Simon Russell-Beale puts it:
“Choristership is a fantastic professional discipline which instills in children
a maturity and a critical awareness of their own performance.”
On the stage: chorister Will in the role of Bert in the school’s production of Mary Poppins
Letting off steam!
Getting a visiting composer’s autograph