Television has made the South Oxhey Choirs famous everywhere. Gareth Malone, their trainer and conductor, has acquired a unique reputation. The choirs that he has brought together from the people of South Oxhey have made the name of this part of Watford almost as well known as Vicarage Road.

Naturally, the choirs have performed in various places in the area, including the Colosseum, and while it is closed they have had to look elsewhere. For community events, there can be few places more distinguished than the Methodist Central Hall, in the shadow of Big Ben.

So last Friday, the South Oxhey Community Choir and the South Oxhey Youth Choir sang a diverse programme of music at the Central Hall, accompanied by the St Albans Philomusica Youth Orchestra and conducted by Gareth with the energy and charisma that have made him a household word. Many families and friends made part of the large and enthusiastic audience.

So much for the background. What sort of musical experience did the choirs offer to the adventurous concert-goers of our artistic capital? Those for whom music is a matter of academic skills and professional brilliance should have gone elsewhere. Nor did the choirs offer the overwhelming volume, insistent rhythm and extravagant behaviour required by devotees of rock or hip-hop.

There were about twenty in the children's choir and a hundred in the adult choir, sometimes singing together and sometimes separately. We heard a sequence of short choral pieces, sometimes with child or adult soloists, sometimes with audience participation. supported by the orchestra or the piano.

Gareth introduced every piece. One could recognise the training methods that he has adopted so successfully. Some of the soloists displayed real talent, and this experience should stand them in good stead in their continuing musical lives; others had more enthusiasm than ability - but what greater virtue is there in community arts than the encouragememnt of enthusiasm?

Musical tradition, old and new, added to the quality of the programme. We heard Purcell and Rutter. A young singer with a good soprano voice did well in Mozart's Laudate dominum. Finally there were several well-known Christmas carols; in these, as throughout, there were occasional problems of ensemble, especially with complicated rhythms.

It is well known that there are great community choirs in northern English industrial towns, with which I often think that Watford has something in common. The classical idioms of rhythm and harmony survive there, and sometimes in the spontaneous singing of the working men's club and the football stadium, as well as in folksong. Gareth's great achievement has been to create the same thing here, building on a half-forgotten tradition, so that the South Oxhey Choirs commit themselves to the necessary discipline. For this, it is hard to find adequate words of praise.

Graham Mordue