Meet the Liverpool choir with a difference entertaining crowds this Christmas

As a keen choir member, Tim Taylor often wished he could sing the music he listened to instead of the classic choral favourites.

And it was the search for one song in particular that lead him to set up Liverpool Indie Choir.

“A few years ago I’d been doing normal choirs and I was thinking what song I’d really like to sing,” he remembers. “That was Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd, so I went on YouTube and found these two guys called Choir! Choir! Choir! in a bar in Toronto who had the whole place singing it.

“I thought, that’s what I want to do. It took me a couple of years to get out there and get going but that was where the idea for Liverpool Indie Choir came from.”

Tim, who lives in Waterloo, launched the choir in June 2019 then, after the Covid break, they got back together again in August 2021, rehearsing every week at the Nordic Church in the city centre.

At first he created a social account and put out the concept to test the water and got a great response.

“I just thought it would be nice to do something a bit different songs-wise with a choir,” he explains. 

“It was more about wanting to sing songs that I had an affinity with, by artists that I tend to listen to, and also to try and create a choir that I’d like to be a member of not just the leader of.

“I actually put it on social and said that the first 25 people who came to 24 Kitchen Street where our first rehearsal was, I’d buy them a drink! A lot of those people who came on the first night are still with us and now it’s absolutely loved by everybody including myself. 

“One of the best things about our choir is the diversity;  we have all different ages, walks of life, male and female – once the music starts, it’s all hands on deck and we’re in it together.”

The choir often gets 50-60 singers to each weekly rehearsal, and has over 100 members – so many in fact that it’s currently at a maximum capacity for membership.

The setlist is, just as Tim originally intended, made up of indie anthems.

“I’m a huge Radiohead and Foo Fighters fan so we’ve done My Hero by Foo Fighters and High and Dry by Radiohead, and stuff by The Killers and the Chilli Peppers. I was a fan of Oasis when they were big too so we’ve done Cast No Shadow which sounded lovely because there’s lots of harmonies going on.

“I’ll listen to songs and just know if I think I can make it work for the choir and if it’ll be fun for us to sing. I do the arrangements and the harmonies so I hear songs on the radio or anywhere and I’m always thinking, how could we do that?”

Tim says the Liverpool Indie Choir has built up quite a following over the past couple of years so they’re now regularly invited to sing at events. 

After getting crowds singing along last year, they’ll be back for a second pre-Christmas performance at the Albert Dock this Saturday, December 2, from around 1.30pm, and also at Baltic Market for three successive Sunday afternoons, December 3, 10 and 17, at 2pm. 

“This is my day job now, and I’m so lucky because the people in the group and the sense of community that we have is incredible,” adds Tim. “It’s fantastic when we all get into it, it definitely transcends the sum of its parts, and the energy of it can be amazing and quite overwhelming.”

Find out more about Liverpool Indie Choir here.

Get the latest Christmas news for Liverpool HERE and visit our calendar to see what’s on across the city region as the countdown continues HERE.