edmund (eddie) evans - Treorchy Male Choir

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22 EXCELSIOR
place in the Rhondda - in Mill Street, Ystrad Rhondda, and Glyncoli Road,
Treorchy. I was born in one. Treorchy Male Choir in the other! On October
16th a group of men, mostly miners or demobbed servicemen following the
war, decided to reform a tradition that went back 70 years in Treorchy - a male
voice choir of its own. George Neighbour and Tom Jenkins, later chairman
and vice presidents respectively ordered the first meeting and within a year
membership reached a hundred men. For the next 23-years John Haydn
Davies, the ultimate maestro and pioneer of male voice choral singing, and
his quiet, unassuming friend Tom Jones at the piano took this choir to the
very heights of success.
This golden reign was a time of triumphant
national eisteddfodau, tours of Switzerland and
Scotland, royal performances at the Albert Hall
and the first in a long tradition of radio and television
broadcasts. Quite simply, John Haydn
transformed his amateur group of singers into a
world-class musical organisation, one that
would be ranked as one of the top three choirs
in the world along with the Mormon Tabernacle
and Vienna Boys Choirs.
His heir apparent came in the form of John
Cynan Jones, a man who took up the baton - in
almost Olympic fashion - and fulfilled his ambi-
Choir Chairman Gareth Evans
with guest speaker Mel Thomas
tion to take the choir to even greater glory. How grateful we are to have
enjoyed the services of John Cynan, our associate conductor of three years,
conductor of 22 years and conductor emeritus of the last 15 years. No other
choir ventured into modern music as successfully as Treorchy and certainly
no other choir found itself worshipped to such a degree by the likes of Tom
Jones, Burt Bacharach, Julie Andrews and Ella Fitzgerald. With Jennifer
Jones at his side, John Cynan benefited from the growth of the motorway system
in the UK which allowed the choir to travel further and faster than ever
before. And of course the lucrative EMI record deal saw Treorchy preserve its
unique sound on vinyl - and cd - for evermore.
Overseas tours have always played a major role in promoting the choir’s
work abroad. With two visits to Canada in the 1980s, choristers were then
treated to the tour of all tours - the James Hardie Industries Tour of Australia
in 1986, becoming the first Welsh choir to perform at the Sydney Opera
House. Throughout the 1990s and first half of this decade it was John Jenkins
and Marion Williams, followed by Andrew Badham and Rhiannon Williams,