Viv Hardwick talks to Stephen Bowman of Blake about his unique route to pop-classical fame as his quartet prepare to share the Darlington Arts Centre stage with a school choir.

THE intimate atmosphere of Darlington Arts Centre and the inspired decision to recruit a town school choir to sing on stage for three arrangements means that pop-classical singing act Blake continue to enjoy their unusual route into the world of entertainment.

Next Thursday the quartet, famous for having got together via Facebook, arrive in the North-East with a unique blend of songs and an unshakeable belief in their singing ability which makes the four highly critical of the Autotune electronics used to hide the fact that some of today’s performers can’t hold a tune.

Baritone Stephen Bowman says: “All we’ve ever asked for is honesty with regard to Autotune I think that the most common thing is that it’s used on a lot of major artist’s live performances and people are never told. It’s there in the background and it’s been assumed by artists that this is perfectly okay and doesn’t matter. Our opinion as four singers who have spent a lifetime learning to sing is that it is definitely cheating to do it without telling the audience first. What we are hoping is that those performers like us will have a little logo saying something like ‘happy to be AT free’.”

He is confident the sound created by him, Ollie Baines, Jules Knight and Humphrey Berney is always “100 per cent live” and will feature tracks from Blake’s latest album, Together.

“When you’ve got a smaller stage you can’t move around as much but the two-hour show has the same approach although every single show we do on this tour is very different. The chat, the banter and the humour between the guys is totally different because different things take our fancy. If the audience are up for fun and enjoy classical numbers and big pop-rock numbers and treats it as a variety show that doesn’t take it too seriously then they are going to have a great time,” Bowman says.

He’s unusual as a singer because he won a coveted place at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama as 17 after his voice broke at the tender age of ten. “When you’re that age you have that embarrassing thing of your voice starting to break and I don’t know whether my parents fed me too much red meat, but by the time I was 12 or 13 I was singing parts normally done by those who are 14 or 15. It wasn’t until near the end of my teens that I switched (from pop and rock) to classical, and I ended up studying at the Guildhall. I auditioned at 17 and became the youngest person in the history of the college to gain a place as a baritone. I was a bit freakish and a lot of others were a bit wary of me and walked on the other side of the corridor. A violin is a violin and doesn’t change very much but a human voice changes so much that there are so many variables as to what it’s going to up like,” he explains.

On the decision to include Darlington’s ArtsSpark choir, Bowman says: “We’ve chosen the best choirs from each area and they’ve all been doing their rehearsals for the three songs they’re going to be singing: Nessun Dorma, Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah and the fantastic English anthem Jerusalem. So they are three songs which use the choirs brilliantly... and it’s a great opportunity for a choir which may never have appeared in front of a packed house before.”

And on Blake’s current place on the entertainment ladder, Bowman adds: “We’ve been a live popclassical group for four years now and we’ve had the opportunity to experience every type of venue there is from audiences of just 20 people and very, very select events to 160,000 people at the Melbourne Cup in Australia. I don’t think most performers have done quite this spectrum and in all this time we’ve tended to find that the ones we remember and enjoy the most aren’t the massive ones but those where we get to interact with the audience a lot more.”

■ An Evening With Blake, Darlington Arts Centre, Thursday (Oct 28). Tickets: £16.50. Box Office: 01325-486-555 darlingtonarts.co.uk