Gareth Malone

Born in London during 1975, Gareth Malone spent his childhood immersed in music at home and eagerly took part in every vocal opportunity that primary and secondary school offered, ranging from choirs and stage productions to seasonal caroling. He pursued drama at the University of East Anglia before completing postgraduate vocal training at the Royal Academy of Music in London. While employed by the London Symphony Orchestra, he received an invitation in 2005 from a production company to lead the reality series The Choir. On the program he guided teenagers lacking prior vocal experience through choral rehearsals and ultimately brought the ensemble to the 2006 World Choir Games in China. The series earned a BAFTA for Best Feature. Building on that achievement, he hosted further reality singing projects such as The Choir: Boys Don't Sing in 2008 and The Choir: Unsung Town in 2009. By 2011, after additional television appearances and documentaries, he revisited the original choir premise with The Choir: Military Wives; the resulting single “Wherever You Are” by the Military Wives surpassed 2011 X-Factor winners Little Mix to claim the UK Christmas number-one position. He returned to the screen in 2012 with Sing While You Work and introduced the format to American audiences in early 2013 via It Takes a Choir. That April he opened auditions for a new ensemble intended to establish “a new choral style that is fresh, modern, and utterly unique.” Half a year later the project materialized as Voices, a modern reinterpretation of the traditional choir. The group’s self-titled debut album appeared late in 2013 and reached number 23 on the UK charts. Malone assembled further choirs for broadcast events, among them a gathering of British celebrities who recorded a version of Avicii’s “Wake Me Up” for the 2014 BBC Children in Need appeal. In 2016 he revisited the Voices initiative, releasing the seasonal album A Great British Christmas with assistance from community choirs and ensembles drawn from across the British Isles. The third studio album, Music for Healing, arrived in 2019 on the Decca label. Drawing from his own difficulties the preceding year and his engagement with survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire, Malone intended the recording to “bring peace and tranquility into the homes of those who have endured hardships.”