Name: Mark Salmon
How long have you been a member of Johns’ Boys Male Chorus?
Since 2025.
Can you tell us a bit about yourself — where you’re from and how you first got into singing?
From Neath in the beautiful south of Wales, I was always encouraged to sing in chapel and a children’s choir -and a whole number of pubs and rugby clubs.
As a maths teacher in London I got to front covers bands, do stand up and the occasional in school poetry jam.
What made you want to join Johns’ Boys Male Chorus?
Friends in the Welsh community in London had always talked of this choir that were pushing the norm of male voices. A fellow chorister had moved back home and had joined this choir. This choir were also close to my new home in Shrewsbury I made my first initial contact with Johns’ Boys Male Chorus around the end of 2022 -it appears that a TV thing was more important! 😉
I was beautifully ignorant of that but a more recent social media post invited new people to enquire and so I did. By this point I had heard clips of that amazing male voice sound and seen the enjoyment that singing together gave. I wanted to be part of it, I wanted to be able to learn to improve my sound, I wanted to enjoy that feeling, that knowledge, that this is really good.
How has your experience with the choir been so far?
It has met and exceeded my expectations. The quality of sound, the variety of the repertoire, the joy of the show/concert, the demand to improve, to be led into a better sound, a better voice have all coated my experience so far. And just being part of such a welcoming group of people is so life enhancing.
Do you have a favourite piece the choir performs (or one you’re most looking forward to singing)?
Gwahoddiad is the very first hymn that made me decide to move from being a front man of a covers band to joining a choir and Myfanwy is the most beautiful and perfect love song -I got to sing the rarely sung second verse with my wife in a concert last year.
I look forward to singing them and the songs that show how much fun and joy and laughter we have as a choir singing for our audience.
What’s something fun or unexpected about you that the audience or choir fans might not know?
Having never sung in anything a decade ago, I’ve won three national Chorus gold medals, sung internationally and now with the two best choruses in the UK.
I get to compère the annual Brecon Choir Festival every July -5th year in 2026. Here I am able to read some of my poetry, fall back on my stand up experience and sing with some well known and loved choirs.