A talent scout spotted the young Alex Donaldson's musical potential and altered the course of his life.
By late teenage in the Seventies, he was big in Japan. Bigger even than Abba. He only discovered that when he landed there at the end of his journey from England.
"I found out – because I went to the First Class toilet – that Abba were on the plane," he says. "When we got to the airport there were hundreds of Japanese girls waiting. But Abba walked through unnoticed. They were there for us."
This was not all the reception which 19 year-old Alex and the other members of St John's chapel choir, Cambridge, were anticipating. "It was bizarre and very flattering. They then came and stood outside our hotel. It was weird."
If the Japanese can be persuaded to get excited about choristers singing the Allegri Miserere as well as listening to Dancing Queen, or whatever is top of the charts this week, then why not here as well? It's not as daft as it sounds. Alex Donaldson is now the headmaster of the school which trains choristers for York Minster and is about to get in tune with a much wider audience. The school has been boosted by the £10m package announced by the Government last month to fund a national singing and music education campaign aimed at primary schools.
Howard Goodall, appointed "singing ambassador" in charge of this has a similar background to Alex Donaldson's in cathedral choral music. Goodall also understands popular tastes and his work is familiar to everyone, even those who have never heard of him. He composed the theme tunes for Blackadder, Mr Bean, Red Dwarf, The Vicar of Dibley and numerous other top-rated television shows.
"There's an outreach programme where schools like ours use their excellence in their field to help foster singing in local schools," says Alex Donaldson. "Our programme will begin in the summer term, workingwith a small number of primary schools. We will do a CD of choral music, with a version without the words, which they can rehearse. This will culminate in a Minster concert. The following term we will move to three different schools.
"We want to get children involved in choral music, not churchy music. They have no experience of it – the days when every primary school had someone who could play the piano and maybe the organ have long gone. We will run a Saturday morning choir which will become the York Minster Youth Choir. It's an all-embracing singing youth venture."
Potential stars need to mark an upcoming date in their diary. The open auditions, male and female, for a place at Alex Donaldson's Minster School as a chorister are next Saturday (February 24). Those who succeed will start the following September as probationers. It's a preparatory day-school, but selection could be an educational bargain, since bursaries can fund a chorister up to 100 per cent.
"We take the four best boys and the four best girls on the day. If they are not good enough, we take fewer than four." About half usually come from present fee-paying pupils at the school. One of them is Max Auty, son of Peter Auty, who was a choirboy in 1982 when he recorded Walking In the Air in the animation film The Snowman (three years later it was Aled Jones who became the child prodigy when he recorded the song as a Christmas single and appeared on Top of the Pops).
"Last year three of the girls came from the school and none of the boys," says Alex Donaldson. "We are looking for vocal potential, not fully-formed voices, which can be trained or moulded.
"We have photos in the archive of boys queuing down Deansgate for the audition. Now we expect 20 to 25. It's partly a reflection of the decline in church-going. There's no form to tick to say they are C of E.
"Many of the parents of the pupils are not church-goers. It's a big commitment as well, dropping them off and picking them up and everyone needs to go in with their eyes open."
Evensong at the Minster – candles, ceremony and angelic voices floating upwards into an awesome space – is an affecting experience even for those without faith. More people come to Evensong at York than anywhere else, apart from St Paul's Cathedral, and the sound of music in such an inspiring setting is something that is unique to us says Alex Donaldson.
"In northern France, go into one of those great cathedrals and they're magnificent. But they are quite silent, there's no living choral tradition."
To keep the programme going, however, requires a demanding routine. It means turning up at times when everyone else expects to be off-duty. On Christmas Day, Minster choristers have to be in at nine in the morning, or after 3pm if they are doing the later services.
It sounds hard work.
"It's actually half what it was when I came in," says Alex Donaldson. "The boys' choir and the girls' choir now do half each." There were no girl choristers in his day. The Minster School did not become co-educational until 1987 and the girls' choir made its first public appearance 10 years ago.
"It can be the critical, pivotal thing in a child's life.
If I hadn't been a singer, I would never have got to Cambridge. I was a Cub Scout and I sang a song at the Gang Show. It happened that the guy who was the organist at Dundee Cathedral was in the audience and asked if I would sing. From that moment, nothing was quite the same again.
"There was no cathedral song school in Dundee and I was at a reasonably rough comprehensive school. I continued to be a chorister and was still doing it at the age of 15. When I was young, it was not unusual for someone to still be singing treble at that age. Usually their voices break earlier today, between 12-13. We're not sure why."
His Gang Show break-through eventually enabled him to become a professional singer and tour the world. Sacred music brought him into contact not just with Swedish superstars but turbulent events. He just happened to be in the Philippines when Ferdinand Marcos was overthrown
Westminster Abbey is alone now in having a school solely for choristers. At York, the Dean and Chapter sit on the board of governors of the Minster School, although it has been self-financing for 25 years.
The Minster choir comprises six Songmen (paid adults), six choral scholars at York University and either the boys' or girls' choir, both with 20 members.
Experience shows that after six years of the routine of the church, choristers want to explore other things in life when they leave the school at 13, their enthusiasm rekindling later. The ranks of the St William's Singers, who perform the Midnight Mass in the Minster, are largely made up of ex-pupils.
The originals were children of the 12th century – a small number of boys recruited and trained by a master of choristers who also had to teach them to read and write. There were three rows of seats or "forms" – the origin of our modern school forms or classes – where the choristers had the lowest row as "boys of the third form". By 1307 boys were being taught by Richard Craven, who received eight pence a week from the chapter for each boy's board and lodging.
The first time they emerge as individuals from the anonymity of history is 1578 when a list of choristers' names appeared: Henry Driffield, William Wilman, John Freeman, Thomas Lane, Matthew Hardy, Arthur Harison, Edward Giles, John Barnes, William Colyer and Henry Hudson.
Today's successors mostly come from Year 2 and spotting them is what Philip Moore, the Organist and Master of the Music at the Minster since 1983, describes as "the most crucial part of my job".
Will a Gang Show number or a pop song do next Saturday to get a child accepted as a chorister? "I'd be perfectly happy with a pop song because you can still tell what their voice will be like. Hymns are more usual – Morning Has Broken is a good one, it helps to show off the voice. Other favourites are Away in a Manger and All Things Bright and Beautiful.
"I'm happy to see people ahead of the voice trials – informal talks can be useful. It's potential we are after, not ready-made ability, a voice that can be developed into something good. We are not looking for another Aled Jones.
"Even if they first come with their parents who don't have much idea about what goes on in the Minster, they quickly latch on to everything. I think they respond because it's something that is being judged by adult standards."
What does he think of Howard Goodall as the singing ambassador? "It's a marvellous Government initiative. It's live and physical and there are enough studies to show that singing can help the state of mind. If the children want to ask me a question, I sometimes asks them to sing it to me. Music of any kind is making their own entertainment – doing something animated, not sitting in front of the television watching rubbish. It's something intangible that's coming from the body."
These days the Minster moves to a different rhythm. How did he feel about Archbishop Sentamu's musical innovations?
"I find him very encouraging. At Christmas, at the second carol service before the final prayer, the Archbishop said he wanted to say thank you and we received a round of applause. I find that very heart-warming. It's difficult for the congregation to say thank you.
"We did two pieces he'd written, one a Te Deum, and sang an African hymn. I helped at another at which he played the drum, very expertly."