A choirmaster who has been hitting the high notes for 40 years at Mansfield and District Male Voice Choir has been honoured for his enduring service and enthusiasm with a special award. Musical Director Ian Grice has been involved for half the life of the choir and two-thirds of his life… that is belief and commitment personified and something the choir felt worth celebrating. Ian joined Mansfield and District Male Voice Choir in September 1985. He has always had choral music in his blood as a result of growing up in a strongly Methodist family where parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins were actively involved in The Hill Methodist Church in Kirkby in Ashfield for many years. If you visit the church, you will see several plaques and boards of honour bearing family names; Ian’s mum, brother and sister-in-law still worship there.
His Christian beliefs brought him to the choir as, at that time, many male voice choirs had their roots in churches and, in this area, the mining industry. Mansfield and District Male Voice Choir can trace its formation back to Rainworth Methodist Church, where the choir was inaugurated in 1926 before combining with Mansfield Orpheus in 1944. In 2024 the choir celebrated its 80th anniversary. He started at the choir as a 1st tenor, before progressing to principal tenor soloist and becoming Deputy Musical Director in 2007, a role which he held for 10 years. Upon the retirement of Mrs Meryl Chambers in 2017, he took up the baton and leadership of the choir.
He is highly respected in the Mansfield area, particularly in many of the local churches, and in the wider male voice choir community, not only in the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire area, but amongst many UK-based choirs and also with the major choirs of Wales and the Welsh Association of Male Choirs (WAMC). His network has afforded the choir access to participate in the WAMC festival concerts at The Royal Albert Hall, London, on no less than three occasions, and they are well placed to continue in these performances in the future.
He has a wonderful ear for music and can pick out an error in a section, or even individual choristers, and works with the singers until it is right. This quality is reflected in Mansfield and District Male Voice Choir’s sound. Each chorister can absolutely rely on his conducting skills and feels confident in delivering what he requires to get the best out of the music in the way the composer and / or arranger conceived the piece. Consequently, their reputation goes before them, and they easily find partner choirs for their annual ‘away matches’.
Ian has an enduring, boundless enthusiasm not only for choral music, but also for people; he just likes meeting and getting to know folks. It is his overtly friendly and encouraging nature which sustains the core values of camaraderie, respect and mutual support of which the Mansfield choir is justly proud. The choir have shown their gratitude for Ian’s contributions to the life of our choir with the presentation of a certificate (frame to follow) and a trophy conductor’s baton during a relaxed social evening attended by choir members, the choir Supporters’ Group and families and friends. A more formal presentation of engraved glassware was presented to Ian at our 80th Anniversary concert in Southwell Minster on 5th October 2024 in front of an audience of 450 people – another testimony to the success of the choir under Ian’s leadership.