When our Music Director Clare Edwards isn’t conducting notorious, she is Director of Learning and Events for Young Voices.

Young Voices is the largest children’s choir in the world.

At a Young Voices concert, the stars of the show are the massed children’s choir drawn together from literally thousands of primary schools, performing with famous artists and the Young Voices band.

Their choirs range from 4,500 to 8,500 children per concert, all performing at the same time to capacity audiences of friends and family in arenas across the country.

In September and October each year, Clare runs workshops for the teachers, where they get the opportunity to learn the music that they will be teaching their own school choirs, plus top tips on how to get the most from their young singers.

But last month, Clare got quite a surprise when world-famous tenor Alfie Boe dropped in!

Clare tells us what happened:

“I was running a teacher workshop at Sheffield City Hall and Alfie Boe was playing the main room that night.

He was walking past our event on his way to Boots and our CEO said hello and invited him to say hello to the teachers. I was on stage at the time doing my presentation and suddenly I was upstaged as Alfie came in.

The teachers were not allowing him to get away with just saying hello and asked him to sing.

Our Musical Director took to the keyboard and offered to play and it was agreed that Les Mis was the way to go. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house as he sang a perfect rendition of Bring Him Home. Amazing.

We wondered if we’d bullied Alfie into it but later in the afternoon when the teachers were singing through a Young Voices song he popped his head round the door and congratulated the teachers on their singing. 300 very happy teachers!”

Have a look at the video below!