As the 18-25 choir prepare for their tour of South Africa in the next few weeks, I’m drawn back to the dusty album which I’ve carried with me through various house moves over the past 25 years, with photos, plane tickets, concert programmes and other mementos from the 1999 World Tour, which started in South Africa.

Our first stop was The Apostle Battery, Llandudno, just outside Cape Town. Compared to salubrious settings of National Youth Choir courses in England’s various boarding schools, The Apostle Battery was no less character building, but the sunsets proximity to a beach were an exciting novelty. In the midst of South African winter, the sight of 120 or so British teenagers heading into the surf certainly bemused the locals.

The power of music to unite and give shared experience was strong in the early days of the tour, as the choir bonded and memorised the repertoire, meeting other choirs and musicians. As we were rehearsing one day, we paused and heard something unexpected from the kitchen. The cooks had learnt the Tchaikovsky 'Khvalitye Gospoda' from the liturgy of St John Chrysostom by ear as they worked, and were persuaded to come out to sing with the choir. It was an extraordinary sound with a vocal vibrato very different from carefully cultivated sound we were trying to achieve, and a freedom and joy in the singing which was inspirational and humbling.

South Africa in 1999, just 5 years after the end of Apartheid, was a culture-shock for a young Brit, and I’m sure the experiences of the current 18-25 choir will be very different, though just as musically and culturally enriching. It became apparent that vegetarianism was not a ‘thing’ in South Africa, as a perplexed host-family asked whether chicken or bobotie were edible for a vegetarian. Our first clue had been the unique vegetarian option of baked beans and banana served at The Apostle Battery (which we subsequently discovered was not a South African delicacy). The choir’s trip to Highgate Ostrich Show Farm (where you can “meet, greet, and eat” the star attraction) further emphasised South Africa being a nation of carnivores!

Our first concerts were performed in Stellenbosh University Hall, and then at Cape Town Town Hall, with legendary conductor Andre van der Merwe and his choir Pro Cantu. It is wonderful to see Andre continuing to inspire young singers in his current role with Stellenbosh University Choir, and their recent video brought memories flooding back of singing in the same hall under that same beaming smile.

I’m not sure that 18 year-old me could articulate to my hosts, to the choir leadership team, my parents, or Sainsburys (where I was working to finance going on Tour) just how grateful I was for the experience of the 1999 Tour. Musically and personally, Tour was a hugely formative experience, setting the bar for the quality of music-making I’ve aspired to throughout my adult singing life. The 1999 tour was very much in my mind, when in 2007 I discovered that the Oxford choir I was auditioning for had recently recorded the music of Peter Klatzow, the South African composer whose music I’d first fallen in love with in Stellenbosh. My choir family continued to turn full circle as I reunited with other 1999 National Youth Choir members, and former members of Andre van der Merwe’s choir who also joined Commotio.

Much of the 1999 repertoire is still firmly in my memory banks. As the Alumni choir sang 'Kvalitye Gospoda' in Oxford in 2022, with Will Dawes at the helm, my Soprano sisters surrounding me, and Matt H encouraging us from the back row to nail the top notes, I felt transported back to that draughty mess hall in Llandudno, with the smell of bananas and baked beans in my nose, and a South African vibrato in my ears.

Kate Smith, National Youth Choir Alumna