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In the Smoke Named 2012 Voice Festival Communities Champions

February 2012
After a fantastic day of a capella at the Greenwood Theatre in London, In the Smoke were named the 2012 Voice Festival Communities Champions. The Voice Festival has been running since 2008 and is the only UK-wide festival for unaccompanied singing. The festival was initially open to University groups, but the Voice Festival has expanded to include a Youth category and this year for the first time, a Communities competition.
The competition attracted a diverse range of styles and groups in a small but classy field. It was great to hear Jezabella and a fella master harmonically complex jazz numbers with real charm; the impressive swing trio Make do and mend reinvigorated war time classics and very much made them their own, and it was a real treat to watch the excellent Refrains electrify the room with their colourful stage presence and exciting arrangements.
Each group only had a maximum of 10 minutes to showcase their vocal abilities and the challenging performance constraints proved to be a great platform for each group to impress.
Our set included Summertime (Gershwin), Teardrop (Massive Attack by way of Newton Faulkner), and a medley called Don’t stop the music, featuring the unlikely partners of S Club 7 and Madonna, amongst others!
The competition judges this year were Kevin Fox and Clare Wheeler from the internationally acclaimed Swingle Singers. They had a range of awards to present. The outstanding arrangement which was won by our very own Andre Flemmings for Teardrop, Phoebe Fildes of the Refrains won the Outstanding Soloist and Becca Dale (a former Smokie) took home the vocal percussion award.
In the Smoke took the overall festival title, with the judges describing our performance as a “Fantastic variety of textures...... powerful and exciting”.