Candy Verney’s passion is to inspire and create a sense of harmony through singing — offering experiences that go beyond the ordinary.
For over 40 years, she has been building communities through song, first with children and later with a wide range of community choirs. A committed member of the Natural Voice Network, Candy believes in the power of singing as a transformative force. Read more below about Candy’s journey, achievements, and major projects plus a testimonial from her long time collaborator Lindsey Williams.
Choirs
Over 15 years Candy developed and directed a group of 5 choirs in Bath and West Wiltshire called “Singing in the Round”, that joined together to celebrate seasonal festivals in special places. This has been the catalyst for many other choirs forming, so that now every town in the area has a community choir. Candy’s inspirational choir ‘Sounding It Out’ , based in Trowbridge, which she directed over 7 years, continues under new leadership.
Choir Leadership Trainings
Candy designed and facilitated a very successful Community Choir Leadership Training, which ran for 20 years. Many previous participants have gone on to make this their full time profession.
"Hugely useful week. I now know WHAT I need to prepare - timing, beginnings, endings, staffing notes etc. Excellent- well planned and thorough. Good balance between input from Candy and our own experienced learning. Great to have the notes. INTENSIVE - there is a lot - but that’s what we’ve come for. We’ve worked hard but it has been so worth it. Peer learning as well as Candy’s wealth of experience."
— Abigail from Ireland at The Song House 2019, now running her own choir
"I found the course intense and very challenging, but so very rewarding. We learned so much material in the teaching days, it will take a while for it to sink in. The practical sessions were very supportive, great considering various levels of skills in our group. We were told to challenge ourselves and most of us did just that- I did my first arrangement and my first improvising!"
— Graham from Belfast The Song House 2016, now running a school community choir
Soul Soundings
For 11 years, from 2010, Candy initiated and ran a spiritual event called Soul Soundings, which took place in some of the world’s most ancient and sacred buildings - Wells Cathedral and Bath Abbey, for example. Participants were invited to explore the resonance, connecting to those who have worshipped and sung there over hundreds of years. Moving around the building, experimenting with different tones, using echoes, drones and free singing to deeply experience the resonance within the fabric of the building. Over ten years, they raised more than £3,400 for the Barenboim-Said Foundation and the Oxfam Syrian Refugee Crisis Appeal.
Candy passed the event on to Jane Harris – songways.co.uk – from 2021. Watch Candy’s entry for the Sony FS7 II competition in 2017 below.
Trowbridge Song Project
Candy was awarded Arts Council funding in 2013 to set up and develop the Trowbridge Song Project, with two aims: one was collecting and archiving for posterity stories of migration from people who have arrived to live in Trowbridge from diverse shores, but now call this Wiltshire town home. You can hear short audios from these stories on Soundcloud. The entire oral history collection is also archived at The Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre. The other was building friendship and community between people from many countries, by sharing their songs. We had 3 big concerts, with acts from Africa, Eastern Europe, Turkey, Jamaica, Tibet, Poland, Guyana, and massed choirs involving hundreds of singers. A film of the project was made by by Samiha Abdeldjebar. Watch it below.
The Song House
In 2014, Candy fulfilled a dream of a lifetime, living in the wilds of Co. Donegal, Ireland. With her husband Robin Botley, they renovated an old house, formerly The Poets’ House, and developed an inspirational retreat centre, offering her own courses, as well as many other life enhancing courses run by others. After ten magical years, Candy passed the business on to Paul McCann, who continues to develop and grow the vision that shaped The Song House into the vibrant creative retreat and community hub it is today.
Song Books
Candy has published several books of songs. She wrote two books of songs, firstly for young children and their carers, published by Hawthorn Press. Over the last 10 years, Candy and friend/collaborator Lindsey Williams have written several books of songs together. Candy uses her extensive experience of teaching choirs to make arrangements of Lindsey’s thoughtful and lyrical songs, arrangements which are rewarding to sing and bring out the essence of the original song.
In Lindsey’s words:
After chewing her pencil to the lead, Candy found she was unable to write her own affidavit, and asked me to have a go instead. I am delighted to do so. I have worked with Candy for over a decade, collaborating on writing and arranging songs for choirs. She is an extraordinary choir leader, combining the expertise derived from a classical training, with a deep and pervasive commitment to the principles of inclusivity and community-building. Every choir which Candy leads becomes a tight-knit group of friends, bound together through her unfailing positivity, her belief in others, and her capacity to develop and nurture each individual’s potential and creativity. Her focus on ensuring that everyone feels valued builds trust, confidence and risk-taking, in a Candy-created atmosphere of safety and acceptance. She deliberately and successfully enables others to grow, to flourish and to flower.
Candy is also an exceptional musician, teaching every piece by ear, and remembering each of the parts apparently effortlessly. Tenors struggling with that note? She’s over there at once, singing along with them. Basses not quite got that tricky rhythm – here, let’s all say it together like this...that’s it....now let’s try singing it.
She adapts her approach to the needs of each group, keeping things basic (but still satisfying) with less experienced singers, stretching more experienced singers, but always aiming for the highest standards. She chooses music from across the centuries and across the world, selecting pieces which satisfy, whether they be sombre, soulful or joyous, always suited to the time and place, and with the power which stems from emotional authenticity.
Candy is a highly experienced arranger, and her arrangements always ensure that each part has something interesting to sing. (Altos in particular appreciate this.) Her arrangements add a whole new dimension to the songs, supporting the meaning with her careful, imaginative and skilled choices of harmony and rhythm. She has a bottomless pit of musical knowledge to draw upon, not just in relation to arranging music - along the way, we also learn about heterophony...the mixolydian mode...harmonic resonance...quodlibets...and the Devil’s interval! All thrown casually into a heady mix of singing and laughter and sharing and celebration. Candy is truly not-to-be-missed.