A group of friends, casting around for fund-raising ideas to restore the 1844 Bishop & Son organ designed by S S Wesley, at St Giles’ Camberwell, in South London, thought a karaoke night with the organ might work. They added a five-piece band, invited MC Kit Green (in the guise of faded Edwardian Music Hall star, Ida Barr) to get everyone on their feet and singing, and ORGANOKE was given its premiere in 2016 at the Camberwell Arts Festival.
It’s since become a sell-out fixture year-round at St Giles: the 400-strong audience each time ranges from babes-in-arms to retirees, with all generations in between. They are generally people who would never usually set foot in a church – or those whose reaction is ‘church wasn’t this much fun when I used to go!’
‘The most brilliantly bonkers evening out’, ORGANOKE has evolved into an event where the audience and not just the performers are the stars of the show. It has celebrated birthdays, anniversaries and pre-wedding parties: it’s a euphoric evening of community singing ‘ a bit like the end of a wedding reception with the boring bits taken out’, as one member of the audience posted on social media afterwards. Kit Green’s funny and poignant performance as MC Ida Barr skilfully turns a room full of strangers into a community that just wants to be part of a shared joyous evening.
So who’s ‘The Organist’ on these occasions? Step forward Director of Music at St Giles Camberwell, Ashley Valentine, one of the founding team along with Producers Jordana Leighton and Tom Leighton, and Kit Green. Ashley was a Chorister at Wakefield Cathedral: his piano teacher suggested he should play the organ, and he started playing in the churches around his North Yorkshire Diocese from the age of 12, then continued playing while studying Music at York University.
Directing an ORGANOKE evening from the organ is a ‘mildly terrifying experience’ says Ashley. ‘Starting out on Bohemian Rhapsody feels no different from beginning a classical recital: except that you can’t really practice for the event. Communicating with the band and keeping it together if the audience go off piste demand a lot of musicianship.’
Much hard work goes into what for the audience is a spontaneous event – he has produced lead sheets for the ensemble for a repertoire of over 120 secular pop and rock songs, designed to appeal to all musical tastes, from twentieth-century classics to whatever is a current popular favourite. ‘Even at Christmas, when you would think the music is more straightforward, every single Christmas song you know has multiple versions!’
The first half of the evening is congregational singing – in the second half a Tombola chooses audience members who have nominated themselves for a song. ‘We have no idea who will sing, who can sing, or even how well they know the song!’ The inimitable Ida Barr calls the singers up, and of course the whole venue sings along with them: the obligatory mass encore at the end sends people happily out into the night.
‘If I could drink tinnies, stand on pews, sing out loud and dance I’d go to church all the time’
‘The biggest knock-on effect of ORGANOKE is that a lot of people now know of St Giles and have heard the organ,’ says Ashley. ‘We have started taking ORGANOKE on tour and would like to see how far it will go. And if it helps organs and keeps them going, and people see them in a different light, then we’ve done a good job.’
Note that ORGANOKE® is a registered trade name of ORGANOKE Ltd and can’t be used without their permission. But if venues would like to show off an underused instrument with a similar event then the team would love to talk about collaboration. Contact them at organoke@gmail.com
The ORGANOKE Alternative Christmas Carol Services for December 2023 at St Giles, Camberwell are predictably a sell-out (with 600 on the waiting list). However there are other events in December at Brighton Dome, and Battersea Arts Centre. More details on the ORGANOKE website, where you’ll also find lots of pictures of people having the time of their lives.
all pictures courtesy of ORGANOKE
