All together now

In recent years, more and more artists have invited audiences to sing along with their performances. Rebecca Franks investigates this growing trend

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Jacob Collier is on stage with the Britten Sinfonia, in a packed-out concert hall. We've already been treated to a freewheeling, virtuosic and wildly joyful programme, ranging from Bob Dylan to scat-sung Bach, Fauré to Anna Meredith. But then the multi-instrumentalist does something different: he invites us all, in the audience, to sing. Turning to face us, he begins to conduct – raising his arm up and down to indicate whether we should sing higher or lower. Then, the crowd is split in two: we have harmony. Energy pulses through the auditorium. Even if you've sung in a choir before, there's something thrilling and magical about this simple act of an audience singing together.

And Collier is far from the only musician who breaks the fourth wall. Violinist Pekka Kuusisto has made it one of his signatures, after he first included the Prommers in his Finnish folk encore at the Royal Albert Hall in 2016. Clarinettist Martin Fröst repeated the trick at this year's Proms, inviting the audience to sing the melody line to Gounod/Bach's Ave Maria while he himself virtuosically played the Bach Prelude accompaniment. When I heard violinist Rakhi Singh at a recent Manchester Collective gig, I was given a chance, along with my fellow concertgoers, to practise my mastery of folk-song rhythms. And cellist Abel Selaocoe writes the audience into the finale of his concerto Four Spirits, with a call-and-response section. In short, go to a classical concert nowadays, and you might find yourself being one of the performers.