……………………………………. Latest CD details below: ……………………………
Music:
As a group of rehearsed choristers, we use a pitch-pipe for our lead note and usually sing 2, 3, or 4-part, male harmony music, suitable (and tailored) for any occasion. We like to bring smiles to the faces of our audience and certainly don’t take ourselves too seriously as we share our love of choral music with others. We have helped to launch and support other choral groups, especially local school-based and community choirs. We are keen to work with school choirs and have provided very successful workshops with Cornish ‘folk’ Songs and Shanties in local (and not-so-local) schools. With lots of help from Cornish linguists we sing in Kernewek (Cornish language) and have performed for Gorsedd Kernow, The Celtic Congress, Cornwall Council and Old Cornwall Societies as well as frequent performances for Newquay’s St Piran’s Day Festival. The group have also worked closely with “Lowender” Interceltic Festival organisers to introduce local schoolchildren to the Cornish Language and Cornish Folk Songs. Choristers have been featured on BBC Spotlight TV, recorded for German ZDF Television and for a London University film about minority languages, as well as a number of slots on BBC Radio Cornwall, Radio Newquay, Pirate Radio FM and Radio Orient, in Brittany, France. In July 2021 they joined Andi Peters on Watergate Beach and were featured live on both ITV’s “Good Morning Britain” and “Lorraine” shows on National TV. They were recorded for Cornwall Council broadcasts about elections (2023) + filmed, singing, on Towan headland on a blustery February morning (2022) and leading The Trelawny Shout (2024)
Always delighted to sing at Weddings, Birthdays or other celebrations the group have sung in churches, pubs, clubs, quarries, halls, private homes, parks, gardens, beaches, cliff-tops, festivals, tents, marquees, on boats, in a slate mine and in a Napoleonic reservoir. We have performed from the main sound stage of the “Lorient Interceltique Festival” with its’ 700,000 visitors over 10 days and opened the mainstage at the “Boardmasters Music Festival” with its 50,000 supporters (one or two of whom were present!). We were even challenged to perform a song from one of the Boardmasters’ Headline Acts and entertained disbelieving audiences with our version of George Ezra’s ‘Budapest’, receiving loud and enthusiastic applause!
We normally sing songs:
- about Cornwall, its communities & industries E.G. ‘Cornwall My Home’, ‘It’s a working man I am’, ‘Camborne Hill’, ‘Lamorna’ and ‘Trelawny’
- about the sea (including some well-known shanties) E.G. ‘Haul Away Joe’, ‘South Australia’, ‘Whip Jamboree’ and ‘Sloop John B’
- from the 60s and 70s which we sing in the “Flying Pickets” style E.G. ‘Only You’, ‘Blue Moon’, ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’ and ‘Dream’
- with more formal male voice choral arrangements E.G. ‘The Rose’, ‘The White Rose’ ‘Steal Away’ and ‘My Lord What a Morning’
We also entertain with a range of seasonal songs and carols, particularly pre-Christmas, and these bring our rehearsed repertoire to well over 100 songs.
Discography
Our 1st Charity CD, released 2015, “Working with Amateurs”, is now completely sold out*. It was recorded at the Music Recording Studio, Treviglas Community College, Newquay, with the help & support of Steve Mildenhall (Head of Music) and work experience students. The final production stages were completed by PMSound, Truro. As a result of sales & collections, we were able to pass on a cheque for £1,200 to ‘The Cove’ Cancer centre at Royal Cornwall Hospital Treliske. This recording included the following tracks: “Good News Newquay”, “Cornwall My Home”, “Haul Away Joe”, “Brightly Beams”, “My Lord, What a Morning”, “Only You”, “Lamorna”, “Home, Home from the Sea”, “Can’t Help Falling in Love”, “Da Do Ron Ron”, “Little Eyes” and “Harry’s Song for Cornwall”
*Tracks are still available on Spotify or iTunes, look up artist: “Oll an Gwella”
Our 2nd Charity CD, released 2017, “All the Best” has also now sold out* It was recorded by Karel Weis at Audiostudio4 and reproduced by West Coast Duplication and sponsored by Towan Blystra Newquay Lions Club. It has helped us to contribute to funding for Cornwall Blood Bikes and, with donations from performances, enabled us, then, to contribute nearly £20,000 to CBB as well as supporting other charities including RNLI and Cornwall Hospice Care, each of which have received several thousand pounds. This recording featured the following tracks: “Men of Cornwall”, “Cadgwith Anthem”, “Santiano”, “Shantyman”, “Cwm Kernow”, “Cousin Jack”, “Bring me a Li’l Water, Sylvie”, “Mingulay Boat Song”, “Chevalier de la Table Ronde”, “The Pasty Song”, “Bully in the Alley” and “The Last Shanty”
*Tracks are still available on Spotify or iTunes, look up artist: “Oll an Gwella”
Our 3rd and latest Charity CD, released 2020, “From the Heart of Cornwall”, is available at a cost of £8 (£10 including p&p). It was recorded & artwork designed by Mike Davey of ICON Audio. As a result of generous sponsorship from both Newquay Lions and Towan Blystra Lions Clubs in Newquay, The Rotary Club of St Columb, Cornish Premier Pasties, Electrical Services (Newquay) and Wind Power generation (St Dennis), every penny raised from sales goes to Cornwall Hospice Care and Cornwall Blood Bikes.
This recording features the following tracks: “Cornwall My Home”, “The White Rose”, “Calon Lan”, “Fiddler’s Green”, “It’s a Working Man I am”, “Blue Moon”, “The Miner’s Lament”, “Steal Away”, “Eli Jenkins’ Prayer”, “Only Remembered”, “Camborne Hill”, “Whip Jamboree”, “Lamorna”, “A Cornish Farewell Shanty” and “Trelawny”
The album is also now available by purchasing a card with a unique code which gives access to a ‘Bandcamp’ digital recording of these tracks – to purchase this latest CD or to access the digital recording via a Unique Coded card please contact:
Jim Christophers (01637 878805) or Tony Mills (01637 876416).
And here’s a couple of free ‘tasters’ of the sights and sounds of the group, the first recorded on a cold and blowy February morning in 2022, so if you would like to see the group singing on their home ‘patch’ … Towan Headland in Newquay, check out the first of these which was a recording made by Chaos TV, Truro, for the Newquay St Piran Festival group, in February 2022 , to show off some lovely drone and other visuals of Newquay, accompanied by a soundtrack recording featuring ‘Oll an Gwella’
YouTube: https://youtu.be/
The second, again by Chaos TV for Newquay St Piran Festival on St Piran’s Day 2024, features the parade leading to Hotel Victoria and some shots from the Children’s Ceilidh in which members of Oll an Gwella support the childrens’ singing before some shots of Oll an Gwella leading the Trelawny Shout at The Central in Newquay. YouTube: https://vimeo.com/932038793/2db0632510?share=copy