Acoustics consultant Dr Rafal Orlowski sound testing in St Margaret's Church for the Early Music Festival

Picture: Frank Dwyer

A gunman joined singers and musicians to produce an unusual chorus in a York church.

They were helping acoustic specialists brought in ahead of work to refurbish St Margaret's Church, on Walmgate, which is to become a £2 million national centre for early music.

While acoustic expert Dr Rafal Orlowski fired his gun, colleagues measured the sound waves as they reverberated around the redundant church, which was, until last year, a prop store for York Theatre Royal.

Delma Tomlin, the administrative director of the Early Music Foundation, said the exercise would reveal what alterations were needed to make the building a successful concert hall.

She said: "Most people look at a building and just see the outside, but we have been listening to it.

"We had singers and musicians playing the harpsichord and violas, as well as the gunfire, to test a range of different sounds."We are trying to create something that really works for us musically."

The early music centre is being built with £1.5 million of National Lottery money.

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