From 9th Century Wales to 21st Century Australia
The Llewellyn Family Tree

With a family tree that covers a square metre of canvas, Viv Llewellyn has a rich heritage indeed. His lineage can be traced back to the 9th Century and includes such luminaries as the Prince of Glamorgan, and Morgan Fychan ap Fychan - Lord of Afan and Afan Wallia, a title that one thinks could take up a third of the canvas space on its own. 
The bottom third of the canvas shows the Llewellyn family of the last couple of centuries were, until the mid 1960’s, the Lords of the Manor at the impressive 1000 acre Cwrt Colman estate, at Pen Y Fai. The stately home was eventually sold to a private consortium that turned it into a first class hotel with grand ballroom.

Viv Llewellyn, recently returned to Pen Y Fai, with the Sydney Welsh Choir (SWC), for the Sixth time since leaving to attend teachers college in the 1960’s. Later in 1973 the Llewellyn family emigrated to Australia where they have lived in the Blue Mountains, ever since. Returning to Wales with the ‘baton’ in hand after a lifetime involved in amateur musicals was unexpected yet significant for Llewellyn, who despite coming from a musical family, received little encouragement or support to be a musician, as a youngster growing up in South Wales.

The seeds for Viv’s journey to Australia were sown in London in the late 60’s where he worked as a Primary School teacher, his first appointment upon leaving Teacher’s College and far removed from the history of his family tree. It was here he met his wife Avril, who had comforted Viv on the recent loss of his mother.

“She was a delightful young lady in a pale blue dress with a Peter Pan collar,” Viv recalls. “I thought oh yeah she’s mine”, he said with an infectious laugh. “She was kind and sympathetic at a time when I was feeling down and we hit it off straight away”.
They married within a couple of years but despite both being full time teachers they found the financial going heavy in London. They drove a $100 Ford Anglia with pneumatic windscreen wipers, struggled to raise the necessary deposit for a London home and rarely got to the west end shows they admired, so they looked abroad.  After reviewing a number of destinations around the world they were lured to Australia with the prize of assisted passage and regular work.

After the ritual journey that so many British migrants experienced, they arrived in Sydney in 1973. Without time to smell the waratahs it was in february of that year that the couple began working in the western suburbs as teachers, where Avril is now an assistant principal and Viv works part-time.

 Around the same time, shortly after arriving in Sydney, Llewellyn also resumed his alternative career in music.  Having appeared in musicals since the age of 10, Viv responded to an advert, “and two weeks later I was playing Alfie Doolittle in My Fair Lady,” he said, with fond remembrance and infectious enthusiasm. Llewellyn, I’m convinced, could charm you into playing Fiddler on the Roof without a safety net.
His last show in musical theatre, after a long, rewarding career was in 2000 as director of Cabaret. He cited a change of  pace as the reason for retiring.

“At the end of 1999 directing the shows became too much, I was fed up with directing and designing and all the things that go with amateur theatre, it was hard yakka. I’d had enough. I just wanted to sing, have a cup of tea and go home to my beautiful wife and son Johnathan,” he said. 

And in a twist of fate it was at the Morriston Orpheus tour in Sydney in 2000 that Viv’s introduction to the Sydney Welsh Choir and that longed for singsong and ‘paned o de’ came to pass.

Viv recalled what happened next. “After the concert at the Opera House we went to Circular Quay for supper and there on the next table was John Lloyd who had been my musical education lecturer at UTS, along with Warwick and Mary Ball and SWC president, Clive Woosnam and wife Helen.

Lloyd said to Woosnam, in his best Denbeighshire, “this is the boy you want in your Choir. He’s got a nice voice”. Then true to form, with a flashing whisk of his arm that blurred under the city lights, Woosnam produced a membership form out of his jacket pocket.

After checking out the choir in concert, Viv joined as a bass and shortly after John Lloyd took over from Margaret Hughes as musical director. Viv enjoyed singing and looked forward to the 2002 tour of the UK for musical and personal reasons but with little thought or idea in which capacity he would eventually take up on tour.
 The Choir was singing well with many ‘momentous and exhilarating performances’ being noted at the time. One newspaper report of a concert in a northern suburbs church suggested the choir was singing superbly. The after show sing - song took in Max Boyce favourites and Oes gaf’r eto and there was much, rarely-seen,backslapping and merriment in the vestry.

 Meanwhile behind the scenes it became increasingly obvious that the partly social nature of the choir, many of the choristers had been members since the choir’s inception, was at odds with Lloyd’s drive for technical excellence. An inevitable yet agreeable parting between the musical director and choir took place a few months out from the tour. Chorister and assistant director, Mary Ball stepped in, but only on the insistence that Llewellyn would be assistant director for the trip.

Llewellyn again recalls events at the time, “I was looking to sit in the basses and mind my own business. I was pleasantly surprised at the offer and I was happy to help out on tour.” When the SWC came back to Sydney from a musical whirl through the Cathedrals and Churches of the UK, it was apparent that there was a mood in the choir for Llewellyn’s playful musical style.

“ Mary had suggested I arrange 5 pieces of music that I was comfortable with and try them out with the choir”, said Llewellyn. “ When we finished the practice, I picked up the music sheets, packed them into my briefcase and stepped down off the podium. Then all of a sudden an unexpected cheer went up from the choir”, he said.
And so it was in 2002 that Viv Llewellyn after minding his own business supping tea with the basses,took up the baton of the SWC.

Viv Llewellyn’s theatrical background and Primary Teaching career shaped him to be a musical director with an emphasis on fun using a light – hearted touch.  It was an obvious attempt to distance himself from the traditional classical approach that he encountered when touring back in Wales. Viv found some conductors to be too demanding of the choristers whilst he prefers to cajole and encourage and to be patient with his charges as naturally as a Primary School teacher would.

Llewellyn’s time with the baton has coincided with a period in the past few years when the SWC has been busy and performing in a variety of venues. A typical year sees them sing in acoustically blessed traditional concert halls and churches. Yet, the SWC have also sung at RSL clubs with its clinking beer glasses and outdoors, accompanied by passing helicopters, at the Celtic festival.

Llewellyn has made light work of the conditions. “ We are the sort of choir who are required to sing in many different venues and we’ve become expert in setting up in different conditions. We only play outdoors on special occasions such as Anzac day or the Celtic festival on Australia day”, he said.

The versatility required of him is a role Llewellyn is happy to perform particularly on those momentous and exhilirating occasions such as the record breaking Riverside Theatre appearances with the Blacktown City Band for example. Incredibly he says, tickets are already selling for the annual Riverside show in December 2007.

It has been quite an unexpected journey for Viv Llewellyn who summed up his accidental journey to becoming musical director of the SWC. “ I didn’t ever see myself in a position like that (conducting). It was so amazing when I think of my grandfather playing the organ for 50 years. He conducted choirs, played the organ at the Albert Hall. As a youngster, my family never gave me the chance to shine like that. When I joined the SWC and circumstances prevailed to find myself at the helm it was amazing. I hadn’t looked for it, hadn’t searched for it, the opportunity just came along out of the blue. And I’m really glad I took it”.

Next month in part 2 of this story, Viv Llewellyn discusses that Square metre canvas and a poignant moment of reflection on his journey back to Wales.