Season 1
8 episodes
43 min. per episode
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A passionate choirmaster unites fractured communities through music, revealing hidden struggles and forging unexpected connections along the way.
Episodes
Gareth believes that spouses of military personnel, especially those personnel who have been shipped overseas into combat zones, are often the forgotten components of military life. He thus wants to give those spouses a voice, figuratively and literally, as well as provide them with a social outlet to get their minds off of worrying about their spouses. Fort Riley military base is his chosen locale to start a military spouses choir. The first challenge he faces is that spouses not only include wives, but a small minority of husbands, who he does not want to exclude, but also can't have those few number of bass clef voices sticking out as they would in such small numbers. The next issue is that although he finds that they as a group are good singers, they are not expressive having shut down emotionally, which he wants to change without them totally falling apart from letting those emotions flow, especially as one of the songs, "Breathe", is meant to be sung to their spouses. This issue becomes even more difficult with news of Fort Riley military personnel deaths in Afghanistan, but which Gareth hopes will be bolstered by the support of the choir as a collective. Gareth hopes that a surprise he has for the concert will inspire the choir to a magical performance.
Gareth wants to unite the students of Brashear High School in Pittsburgh, the student body which is now comprised of long time students of Brashear, as well as students from what was rival Langley High School. Langley closed, which forced the students there now to attend Brashear. What makes his task more difficult is that it is a lower middle class school where many students come from broken homes or homes without much supportive adult guidance. These issues are above and beyond the general problems of dealing with teenagers, such as getting them to focus, them lacking discipline, and their small cliques obstructing cohesiveness. Beyond the overall goal of bringing the student body together, he hopes some students will benefit personally from being in the choir, including: Lord, who comes from a broken home (his father who is currently in prison), is being raised by his grandmother, has had problems with the law himself, and maintains a current 1.7 GPA; Chelsey, a former Langley student who is looking for an outlet to bring her vision of a united student body to life; Shailen, who is blind, autistic, but has an innate sense of music; Ty'rae, who is dealing with a personal tragedy; and Markita, who, to Gareth, is the epitome of not respecting authority, which may stem from her needing to be in authority for her own broken family.
The Madison Blues of Madison, Wisconsin, are one of ten hockey teams in the state in their amateur men's hockey league. Despite the team having good and passionate players, they had a record of 1-19 last season, and because of their poor performance, they rarely have any fans in the stands for their games. Pete and Susie, the team owners and managers and the figurative parental figures, are losing about $700 per game, and may have to fold the team if things do not improve. Gareth believes the Blues forming a choir not only will bring them together as a cohesive unit to improve their hockey performance as a team - Susie believing that the current mentality being every man for himself - but also bring some much needed publicity to fill the seats for games. He has to do some major convincing for the players to agree. Gareth feels he needs to do some team building exercises beyond just getting them to sing together. There is also the want to include Pete and Susie, which, because of Susie means finding other women. Gareth tries to convince the Madison Capitols, an equivalent female hockey team, to join the choir as well. Beyond the overall goal of bringing the Blues together, he hopes some players will benefit personally from being in the choir, including: Casey, who had NHL aspirations, and knowing that will now not happen, needs something to fulfill the exhibitionist side of his personality; and Ryan, for who hockey was a salvation from a troubled and criminal past, who is one of the team captains and de facto leaders in the absence of a team coach, but who the other players do not respect in that pseudo-coach position as being just another one of the players.
Gareth is in the Southern Californian community of West Corvina, home to a large seniors population. In starting a seniors choir there, Gareth wants not only to show that life does not end at retirement, but that seniors can start activities which they've never done before. But convincing many of them of the latter is difficult, as he does admit that most seniors are set in their ways. He does find that teaching old dogs new tricks is more difficult than he wanted, and as such he feels that he literally needs to inject a youthful spirit and presence into the process. Among his choristers are: eighty-one year old Lee, who used to sing but stopped twenty years ago when her husband died; and outwardly serious Gary, a resonant bass who talks himself out of being able to sing what he considers the high notes, but which Gareth has to show him is well within his range. The one person Gareth hopes will stay in the choir but that is wavering is ninety-four year old Alice, whose extroverted exterior masks a fear of performing. By performance time, Gareth realizes that not all will be perfect, but hopes that his choristers' memories will not wane. Through it all, he wants to show that starting an activity late in life is a beautiful thing, regardless of the performance.
The fire & rescue department in Windsor-Severance, Colorado, located just outside of Denver, has been growing in leaps and bounds because of population growth and development. How that growth has manifested itself is the department's services now being housed in three separate centers, where the personnel at each does not know the personnel at the other two locations, which is not good for team building as firefighting requires trust amongst the ranks for life and death situations. Gareth believes that a choir within the department not only will provide an outlet for the team members to get to know each other, but also provide that camaraderie required to foster cooperation in their work. Beyond the real life distractions of needing to attend to calls, Gareth finds that other major obstacles in establishing a choir are that firefighters are trained not to show emotion which he wants in their singing, the team mentality making the firefighters shy about standing out as individuals, and the fear of not wanting to appear foolish to maintain their standing in the community. Beyond the overall goal of bringing the department members together, he hopes some people will benefit personally from being in the choir, including: artistically inclined Austin, who has challenges in his day to day life being dyslexic; Erik, a self-professed non-singer who wants to serenade his wife Emily for a special occasion; and Tracy, the only female firefighter who wants to make her male counterparts feel more comfortable with her in their work.
British choirmaster Gareth Malone believes that choral singing is a way to bring together people to work together toward common goals. As such, he travels across the United States looking for fractured community groups, organizations, and communities themselves that he feels need to be brought closer together for whatever reason. In one week's time with each of these, he will recruit people to join a choir, learn two choral arrangements of songs which features soloists from among the group, and perform those two songs to an audience. These groups may not on the surface be natural fits with choral singing, which may make the process that much more difficult for him. Through this process, Gareth not only wants to bring the people closer together, but also help certain individuals within the group who may be facing personal issues.