Interview, The Bevan Family Consort on Vidi Speciosam

In-house concerts chez Presto have typically been family affairs, thanks to our CEO Chris’s very talented sons and wife who’ve been delighting audiences with ‘rush-hour’ chamber recitals for some years now. Since upgrading to new and more spacious premises in the autumn, however, we’re now in a position to host larger-scale events including insight-evenings and album-launches – and it’s rather fitting that our inaugural vocal event celebrated the debut recording by members of one of the country’s most distinguished musical families. 

Formed in 2013 (initially for what soprano Mary describes as a ‘fun fundraiser’ at Downside Abbey), the Bevan Family Consort is drawn from a pool of 53 cousins and siblings, and builds on the legacy of an earlier generation who released an album of folk-songs and sacred choral music back in 1975 as the Bevan Family Choir. The Consort have followed in their footsteps this month with Vidi Speciosam, released on Signum and featuring music by Palestrina, Victoria, Tallis, Stanford and the late David Bevan (who died in 2021 and to whom the project is dedicated), and it was with much excitement that we awaited five members of the group to perform highlights from the album and share some of the stories behind it...

Baritone David (on an exit-pass from evensong at Wells Cathedral) is first to arrive, swiftly followed by lawyer-turned-tenor Dominic, web developer and editor Francis, and sopranos Mary and Sophie (taking a break from preparing the roles of Gluck’s Euridice and Sullivan’s Princess Ida respectively). As the quintet warm up in one of our rehearsal-rooms, customers and staff alike loiter to enjoy a foretaste of their full-fat, beautifully blended sound, and when they take to the stage at 6.30 we’re all pleasantly surprised to discover that the in-store acoustic actually lends itself rather well to Renaissance polyphony!

Sharing compering duties with wit and warmth, the five singers perform a short programme including David Bevan’s setting of The Lord Is My Shepherd, Palestrina’s Sicut cervus (unanimously declared a family favourite), and Tallis’s O sacrum convivium, which appeared regularly on the order of service at the Chelsea church where the singers learned so much of their trade.

As the sole musician in my extended family, it’s hard to repress a twinge of envy as we sit down to chat after the performance. Bevan family weddings and christenings must be quite something? David notes pragmatically that ‘they’re also very cheap! Aside from the choir being covered, cousin Daisy’s a wonderful jazz singer, I'm a drummer, Francis a bassist, and cousin John a guitarist, so there’s the band for the reception sorted too’. Mary suggests that they’re ideally placed to start up a full-scale wedding business as a side-hustle: ‘We’ve got professional chefs, priests…everything you need, basically!’.

So how many more different career-paths have the non-professional singers in the family taken? ‘Oh, we have all sorts!’ Mary tells me. ‘Dominic was going to be a lawyer but switched to a career in opera because he wasn’t making enough money (!), Hugh runs a catering company with his wife, our cousin Benedict is Head of Islamic and Indian Art at Sotheby’s, and there are various computer-people who come in useful when it comes to researching and documenting programmes – somebody’s got to be handy with a spreadsheet!’.

And for the singers who’ve forged illustrious solo careers in opera and oratorio, is it ever a challenge to come back to sacred polyphony? ‘It’s a struggle, but we make the sacrifice!’, Sophie laughs. ‘It’s fine for the duration of Mass, but in the past we've used a secret signal for full-length concerts: Mary and I don’t have the sort of voices that get booked to do this music, so if one of us is getting a bit weary of floating around the top of the stave we quietly nudge the other and swap lines’.

I mention how much I’ve loved hearing this repertoire sung by such full-blooded voices. Sophie emphasises that despite the occasional bit of vocal fatigue, it’s still very much a labour of love: ‘We grew up singing this music, and it’s why we became singers in the first place. We're not trying to sound like The Sixteen or The Tallis Scholars or any of those other amazing groups out there - what we are is a family who love singing together.’

The Church of Our Most Holy Redeemer and St Thomas More in Chelsea, where David Bevan Senior was Director of Music for almost three decades, was where that love of singing together really took root for the current generation. Sophie reflects: ‘The thing about Holy Redeemer is that it’s a relatively big church with a wonderful acoustic - and Dad was the perfect conductor in a way, because he never told us to stop singing with vibrato or to sing super-quietly all the time, so we were able to nurture our voices very naturally.’

David came to the position after a stint as Assistant Organist at Westminster Cathedral and a spell in Minnesota, and under his direction the church quickly began to attract amateur singers eager for high-quality music-making – and plenty of fun along the way. ‘He’d maybe pay a tenor and a bass to bolster things up, but the choir was mainly made up of family and friends’, Sophie recounts. ‘People would drop in to sing for one service and just keep coming back, because it was such a joyful place to be. It got to the point where there was so much music that Mass was nearly two hours long, but the congregation loved it as much as we did – it got to the point that people were standing in the aisles! It would take up the whole of Sunday: we’d sing Mass in the morning, then head to the pub nearby for the afternoon’. (‘My fee would just go straight over the bar!’, Dominic confirms).

It seems the recording-process (which took place at Buckland House in Devon) was similarly convivial. ‘We had so much fun doing it’, Mary says. ‘It was so wonderful to have the opportunity to spend five days together in such a beautiful place, keeping our friendships going within the family and creating something at the same time. Our Uncle Rupert came along to cook for us, and our children were able to hang out together.’ David concurs: ‘I think we took those things for granted a bit when we were younger because a lot of us grew up in the same village, but these days it’s so difficult to get 16 of us singers (let alone all 53 cousins!) together in one place.’

In the interests of diplomacy and discipline, the Bevans have enlisted the services of an external conductor for most of their projects. Jeremy Summerly and John Butt are among those who’ve been brave enough to step up to the plate in recent years - but for those few days in Devon, Mary suggested her old friend and colleague from university Graham Ross (Director of Music at Clare College Cambridge) would be the right man for the job. ‘I think you have to find that delicate balance of someone who's not overwhelmed by standing in front of fifteen opinionated cousins who all look quite similar, but isn’t so strict with us that we all end up rebelling. It was when Graham was squished on top of me in a cupboard playing Sardines at 2AM that I knew he'd been the right choice!’.

Following on from the earlier discussion of children, an audience-member wonders if the ground-work’s already being laid for the next generation of the Bevan Family Consort? The general consensus is that it’s a little early to say, given that most of the current members’ offspring are under five – though Dominic proudly informs us that ‘their ‘Happy Birthday’ already sounds incredible’.

Sophie jokes that her toddler son ‘can now sing the Salve Regina’, but in all seriousness stresses that none of them would ever pressure their children to pursue musical careers: ‘I think one of the reasons why we all ended up singing is because our family never made us do it, so it was always fun.’ David recalls a conversation featured in the Bevan Family documentary Harmony at Parsonage Farm, during which a similar question was posed to their grandmother Molly: ‘Her response was “I want my children to use all of their talents”, and I think that’s something which resonates with all of us’.

So is there a second recording-project in the works yet? Mary reveals that a Christmas album is in the offing, though the title’s still to be confirmed. Francis’s suggestion of ‘Sing, Choirs of Bevan’ is roundly shouted down, though it transpires that his repertoire-choices are being taken a little more seriously. ‘We haven’t yet talked much about David Senior as a composer: that psalm-setting of his which we sang earlier was fairly regular, but a lot of his music was quite modern and atonal. We’re going to do a carol of his on the new album which is far more in his original style, and there's a lot more where that came from for albums 3 and 4 as well!’.