theporterslog@gmail.com
29th March 2024

Singing bin-man to become new King’s College director of music

Share

King’s College has confirmed the city centre busker who plays the guitar loudly while shut inside a Cambridge City Council bin will take over as director of music.

In a statement released from a triple-glazed office on the far side of the College grounds, King’s Provost Cameron Bridgeworth expressed his delight at the news, just days after the retirement of the incumbent director of music Stephen Cleobury.

“We were originally looking to appoint someone with an outstanding reputation as a choral music conductor. With this in mind, we cast the net wide, interviewing high-profile candidates such as Gareth Malone, Katherine Jenkins and X Factor star Chico – but then we saw the singing bin-man.”

“After his audition, in which he played Bob Dylan’s ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ eight times, it was clear to us that his appointment will bring some much-needed revitalisation to our chapel and choir. The singing bin-man offers a radical vision of twenty-first century choral music, and I think the world needs to hear it.”

The incoming director’s bold plans are said to include buying every choir member their own bin, with a long-term goal of knocking down King’s College Chapel and replacing it with a large, dark cylindrical structure with a gap at the top.

In the short-term, it is understood that the singing binman hopes to streamline the choir’s repertoire down to just one song, sung on a continuous loop until asked by a worker from Cambridge City Council to move fifty metres along.

The reaction among the Cambridge music community has been mixed, with some expressing concerns that stuffing all the choir boys into bins and forcing ukuleles into their tiny quivering hands might negatively impact the visual quality of the annual Christmas broadcast. The move has been welcomed, however, by King’s JCR President Marcus Atherton, who was keen to point out that the singing binman is only the latest development in the college’s tradition of avant-gardism.

“Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution in choir music. We’ve finally found the true music of the proletariat. F*ck Shostakovich.”