Former Beatle Paul McCartney on choirs:

“I love to hear a choir. I love the humanity to see the faces of real people devoting themselves to a piece of music. I like the teamwork. It makes me feel optimistic about the human race when I see them cooperating like that.”

I used that McCartney quote in last Spring's ACDA newsletter. Today, I was pointed to this article about the singer/composer.

Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney has revealed that he was thrilled to switch to choral music from pop in his new album, as singing with a top choir was his lifetime ambition.

McCartney says that his classical record 'Ecce Cor Meum', which was commissioned by Oxford University's Magdalen College, gave him a great chance to prove a point to the local choir that refused him entry as a child.

"I love choirs. I tried out for Liverpool cathedral, and sort of got to the last stages. But I was not musical enough, obviously," Contactmusic quoted him as saying.

McCartney says that during his school days he used to score zero marks in music, as he along with some other students used that class for playing cards and freaking out instead of concentrating on the records played for them by their teacher.

"At school, in terms of musical education, I got zero. We'd all go into the classroom, about 30 Liverpool boys, and the teacher would put on a record - Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, something like that - then he'd leave the room," he said.

"So of course we just took it off, posted a guard on the door, got the ciggies and the cards out, and when he came back, we put the record back on for the last couple of bars. He'd go, 'What did you think of that?' And we were like, 'Oh, really good, sir. Fabulous,'" he added.