Rachel Hore is a songwriter, a teacher and a choir leader who started writing songs in an a cappella group and got into writing folk songs (with instruments) much later. The strength of Rachel's voice skills and experience is clear in her songs but she says that she is so busy with her choral work these days that she doesn't have a lot of time for songwriting.

Rachel feels very grateful to have met Australian songwriter Christina Olsen early in her career. Christina taught Rachel the craft of songwriting and encouraged her to be courageous and begin her own solo songwriting and performing ventures.

We played a recording of "Angry Child" written at a time Rachel was holding down a day job teaching (blessed with a very supportive boss) whilst performing music all over the country. The song is about a very angry special needs student Rachel taught and eventually encouraged to write poetry to channel his anger. It's a beautiful song with a dark interior - full of beautiful harmonies and hopefulness.

A big motivation for Rachel is sharing her songs with others and this has led to her passion for choral songwriting, teaching and performing and it has become her life's work. She founded the pop-up choir in Canberra which is open to any singer of any skill level or experience. She says she writes and arranges the choir's songs to be interesting enough and accessible enough so that anyone can participate in the choir. Anyone who has seen and heard a pop-up choir performance will know that they are stunningly good!

Rachel uses her musical training to help with writing and arranging song melodies and harmonies but it still comes down to feel and instinct working with other choristers to develop songs.

We also discussed "Winter Song" and "The Big Sing in the Desert", important songwriting festivals and workshops where Rachel works with participants to arrange and perform choral songs. The Big Sing in particular is a very special opportunity to work with indigenous singers from six central desert communities. Rachel recounted an experience where she went to the Big Sing with a two-line melody "I want to go back to that land. Bring me home" which came to her after seeing an exhibition of objects which had been taken from Country during colonial times. By the end of the workshop indigenous singers had translated the melody into three central desert languages and it had become an amazing whole song! The song continues to grow and has now been translated into several other languages by traditional singers. We played a recording of an amazing performance of the song at the Big Sing.

Rachel's advice to other songwriters - hold on to that small idea - it might just grow into something amazing!

For more about Rachel's choirs and music: https://rachelhore.com/