Ed Balls will be presenting – and conducting – the BBC Singers at Norwich Cathedral this Thursday, at the Herbert Howells: A Celebration concert. Here, the Norfolk-born former MP shares his eclectic love of music, including being in a band with Robert Peston
Ed Balls has a long-standing relationship with Norwich Cathedral. The Norwich-born former MP recalls: ‘My earliest memory of being in Norwich Cathedral was at a Christingle Service when I was probably five, so that would be about 1973.’
Fast forward 50 years and he is about to present Herbert Howells: A Celebration, when the BBC Singers, accompanied by Norwich Cathedral’s own Master of Music Ashley Grote, will join conductor Nicholas Chalmers.
A few years ago, Ed nominated the 20th Century composer, organist and teacher, who died in 1983, on BBC Radio 4’s Great Lives programme. He says: ‘You had to choose someone who had passed away and I think they thought I was going to choose Denis Healey, because he’d never been on Great Lives before and he was a hero of mine. But I thought “I’m going to choose Herbert Howells”, and so I did.’
Ed was born in Norwich in 1967. His family moved to Nottingham when he was eight, but he recalls from his childhood: ‘My mum and dad met in Trinity Church off the Unthank Road and sang in the choir. Music was very much part of our growing up – obviously we went to church all the time and listened to church music.’
He went on to study economics and philosophy at Keble College, Oxford, and it was there that he discovered the music of Howells. ‘One day I heard this music, and I walked out, saying to somebody, “what was the music?” and they said, “it’s Herbert Howells – you should go and listen to a particular piece, Hymnus Paradisi, by him”. I did and I’ve been listening to him ever since.’
That masterpiece was inspired by a deep sense of nostalgia and personal loss. The death from polio of Howells’ nine-year old son Michael in 1935 had affected him profoundly. Howells became acting Organist at St John’s College, Cambridge during the Second World War and there he began to take an interest in writing music for the church. O God our defender was written for and premiered at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953.
In the imposing surroundings of Norwich Cathedral, Ed will not only be presenting at the event; he will also be conducting two pieces during the evening. The former MP who is married to Yvette Cooper, Labour MP for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford, describes the start of his conducting journey: ‘We have a garden party every year for the constituency and have a brass band, and for the last two years I’ve tried my hand at conducting brass bands, to see what it was like. I conducted the Floral Dance.’
On Thursday, Ed says, ‘I will stand in front of the BBC Singers conducting Herbert Howells, which is amazing.’ The concert is just in time for the return of Norwich Cathedral’s historic organ. There will be second concert the following night, at St Martin-in-the-Fields, London.
‘I’m doing the A Hymn for Cecilia and A Grace for 10 Downing Street, which Howells wrote for Edward Heath when he was Prime Minister, so I’m doing those two and then Nick is doing another eight or nine – he’s doing the hard bits and I’m doing the chat.’
How much of a leap is it, to go from conducting a brass band to conducting the BBC Singers? ‘Herbert Howells is notoriously difficult,’ says Ed. ‘He was brilliant, but he didn’t make it easy. He really stretches choirs.
‘The other thing is it’s unaccompanied which is a bit of a blow because from my point of view having the organ underpinning everything would make life easier. It’s just me and the choir and what I’ve learnt to realise is that they do what I tell them, which is quite intimidating because they are professionals and I’m a total amateur.
‘My dad said to me “don’t worry, however bad you are, they’ll be fine”, but actually it’s not fully true because I do set the tempo and change the tempo, so the hardest thing is I have to stand and look at them and tell them what to do. It’s much easier to look at the floor or the piano or my music, but that’s not really the role, so I think making eye connection with a top professional choir and presumptively telling them this is what we are going to do is quite intimidating.’
Ed was UK Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, from 2011 to 2015, and served in the UK Cabinet as Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families prior to that. Surely, he had transferrable skills? ‘I used to stand in the House of Commons and look over the despatch box, but they didn’t do anything I told them and they weren’t looking at me waiting for instructions, they were yelling at me at the top of their voices, so it’s a bit different.’
Although Ed has been going to Norwich Cathedral all his life, Thursday will be something of a homecoming gig. ‘It’s the first time I will ever have done anything musical in Norwich,’ notes Ed. ‘My dad will come, and he lives just round the corner in The Close, so he’ll like it.’
It’s shaping up to be a particularly busy week, as Ed is co-presenting ITV’s Good Morning Britain until Wednesday. ‘I’ll get up at 3.30, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, go and do Good Morning Britain and then go straight to Maida Vale for the rehearsals so that will be tiring. Then, on Thursday morning, I’ll have to get up early come to Norwich and do a podcast with George Osborne called Political Currency that will recorded in The Close of Norwich Cathedral between 11 and 1 and then dash over to do the rehearsal with the singers.
‘When you’re in the Cathedral the music soars into the air and everything lasts longer, so it’s only really on Thursday afternoon, that I’ll know what it’s really like.
Ed, who is Professor of Political Economy at King’s College, London, adds: ‘Then I teach at King’s so I have to get up Friday morning, get the early train, do a two-hour class on the financial crisis with Masters students and then to St Martin-in-the-Fields for the afternoon which will be a very different acoustic. It’s an unusually busy week but very exciting.’
‘The nature of freelance life is you never quite know if you’re going to have a busy period or a not so busy period but, since 2015, I’ve had periods which weren’t busy and then periods which get very congested.
‘GMB is every other fortnight so for the two weeks I’m not on GMB it’s a bit easier but then the early mornings slightly knock you out for the rest of the day.’
On Instagram, Ed describes himself as Dad, pianist, cook, and retired former professional dancer’ (he was a contestant on series 14 of the BBC ‘s Strictly Come Dancing). His interests also include running, sailing (the father-of-three recently crossed the Channel with his son), and drumming.
Despite describing his drumming skills as ‘pretty rudimentary’, Ed is in a new band called Centrist Dad, with ITV Political Editor, Robert Peston. The inaugural gig was at the York Rise Street Party in Camden, London, in early September. After a short break pursuing own individual projects, they are back in the studio. Ed says: ‘We’ve decided, having done 70s and 80s post-punk, we should punk up more modern stuff so the two new things we are working on, which are coming on really well, are Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen, and Mr Brightside by The Killers. ‘The nature of our singing and drumming means it has to be punked up. We’re not really doing Joni Mitchell if you know what I mean.’
Ed can also play the piano, and on December 3 he will be performing at Lucy Parham’s Celebrity Christmas Gala at Kings Place, in London. He admits: ‘I think that will be EVEN more stressful than the conducting actually because the thing about conducting is, however much my hands shake, which they will as I stand there, the truth is the audience is going to hear the BBC Singers whereas at Kings Place it will only be me.’ He’s also started having jazz piano lessons. ‘I’m enjoying that a lot.’
Is there anything he cannot turn his hand to? ‘I played the violin until I was about 21 but the truth is I played the violin for 15 years and it still sounded bad, so I moved on.’
And don’t get him started on singing, and the time he tried to sing ‘Love Me For A Reason’ to Donny Osmond on GMB, in particular. ‘He went “Ed, let me do the singing”. It was one of the worst slap downs of my life.’ His have-a-go attitude remains, however. ‘Life is about grabbing the opportunities to do new things – if they come along.’
Football is in Ed’s blood and he was Chairman of Norwich City Football Club between 2015 and 2018. He is a lifelong supporter of the club. ‘My first game was in 1972, I think, and I went with my dad and my uncle who both said, “are you sure you want to do this?” to a five-year-old. They said, “it’s a rollercoaster”. Early on in my life I never quite understood why all my uncles were always a bit pessimistic. I thought, “you’ve got to believe”, but, 50 years on, it’s always a rollercoaster.
‘It’s a brilliant club and a great place to go and watch football but, I mean, it’s stressful. I loved the lockdown season when we won the Championship. You couldn’t go to the games, but it was an amazing year – and the year when we went up, in 2017/18, was a great year as well.’
However, he adds: ‘The last year has been tough because Norwich fans want us to play good football and when we’re not playing good football, they don’t like it; when we do play good football and let in loads of goals, they don’t like it either, so at the moment I feel nostalgic for the Farke era.’
He still goes to a lot of the home games and some of the away games. ‘I saw them at Huddersfield or Birmingham…it’s all faded into a slight blob of misery!’
Herbert Howells: A Celebration at Norwich Cathedral takes place on Thursday November 16 at 7pm. The concert will end at approximately 9pm, with an interval of 20 minutes, and the performance will be recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3. To book tickets, visit Norwich Cathedral. The second concert takes place at St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, on Friday November 17 at 7.30pm.
Image picture credit: Nicky Johnson
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