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Torbay Police Choir
 The Torbay Police Choir was formed in 1972 to raise money for local charities, and in its 30 years has assisted in raising of over £200,000 for worthy causes in England and Europe, a fact of which the choir is very proud.
A second aim has been to further police/public relations, in which we believe, along with the other police choirs of Devon and Cornwall, we have achieved a remarkable record. The
choir has performed in concerts all over England, including twice at Cardiff Arms Park in the pouring rain, with five thousand male voices, to audiences in excess of 50,000.
Other notable events have been our visits to our twin town of Hameln, the last being in December 1999, when the choir also enjoyed the Christmas market and a warm glass of mulled wine. We have also made visits to Hamburg, Eindhoven and Maastricht. On this, our latest visit, in 2001, due to lack of male voices, the choir performed for the first time in its history as a mixed voice choir.
There are four original members still connected with the choir, ex Supt. Charles Parsons, who was largely responsible for forming the choir, ex Insp. Paul Sooben, ex Sgt. Chris Brokenshire and ex Special Constable Joe Finch, and they continue to sing in the choir and support it in all its ventures. You will notice they are all ex members of the police service, but then time does march on!
The choir is made up of serving and retired officers and police associated members. We also have some invited guests. Even our Director of Music, Michael Ball, worked for some time as a civilian sub-contractor in the control room at Paignton Police station, before its closure in 1994. The choir continually needs new members to survive and anyone interested, especially if they have a police connection, would be welcome to apply to join us.
We practice every Tuesday evening and give approximately ten concerts per year for local charities.
We have for some time maintained a policy of assisting young artists and many of them have come from the Phylis Whitchell School of Music in
Brixham.
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