First recording for the Choir of St John’s College under Director of Music Christopher Gray
The Choir of St John’s College has released its first recording under new Director of Music, Christopher Gray.
Lament & Liberation features multiple commissions for the Choir conceived with the distinctive environment of St John’s Chapel and organ in mind. These include the premiere recording of Gray’s first commission for the Choir, Joanna Marsh’s triptych ‘Echoes in Time’. Setting poetry by Malcolm Guite, the works cover themes including conflict, seeking refuge, and the environment, highlighting how liturgical music, while timeless, can tackle contemporary issues.
The pieces were commissioned for key dates in the liturgical calendar – the opening piece ‘The Hidden Light’ was premiered at the Choir’s iconic Advent Carol Service in 2023, ‘Refugee’ for the Epiphany Carol Service, and final movement ‘Still to Dust’ for the Lent Meditation service.
Christopher Gray said: “This is an album that can be dipped into, but I hope that it will particularly reward those who choose to listen to it in its entirety. It is not for the faint-hearted. It opens with a single treble voice calling into the darkness and, while it confronts some challenging issues head-on, it ends with the profound hope that ‘They that sow in tears shall reap in joy’.”
Two other recent commissions for the Choir feature on the recording, including Helena Paish’s ‘The Annunciation’ – commissioned and premiered by the Choir in 2024, the piece adapts Edwin Muir’s poem which depicts the meeting of the Angel Gabriel and the virgin Mary. Former Director of Music at Westminster Cathedral, Martin Baker, has written organ prelude Ecce ego Ioannes specifically for this recording, which makes reference to St John’s vision of the world’s annihilation with the opening of the seventh seal.
Baker’s work acts as a prelude to Sir James MacMillan’s triptych ‘Cantos Sagrados’, which sets poems by Ariel Dorfman and Ana Maria Mendoza about political repression in Latin America alongside traditional religious Latin texts. Considered one of MacMillan’s most powerful works, the piece is also noted for its virtuosic organ part, performed here by Herbert Howells Organ Scholar Alexander Robson.
The recording opens with ‘Deus, Deus Meus’ by Roxanna Panufnik – recent recipient of the Ivor Classical Awards ‘Outstanding Works Collection’ accolade – taken from her Westminster Mass and closes with another Ivors Classical Award winner, Dobrinka Tabakova, with her ‘Turn our captivity, O Lord’ to end the recording on a reassuring note.
The Choir has recently returned from a successful tour of the United States, which took place from 30 March to 15 April.
The tour began in Grand Rapids, singing to a sold-out Basilica of St Adalbert in a concert series that was in memory of Andy Larson, a 14-year-old singer who died in a tragic car accident in 2018.
Andy’s favourite choir was St John’s, and he had lots of the Choir’s recordings, so the concert was emotionally charged and a moving experience for the singers.
The Choir then spent a day in Chicago before travelling to Austin and then Dallas where they sang in two services and a concert, each to around 1,000 people.
The next date of the tour was at Sewanee, Tennessee, The University of the South, which was set among magnificent woodland. This was followed by a concert at Grace-St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Memphis.
Christopher added: “Memphis was another highlight, with the children transfixed by the performers at B.B. King’s on Beale Street, before our own concert in a nearby church. We then continued on to St Philip’s Cathedral in Atlanta, at the invitation of Dr Dale Adelmann, an alumnus of St John’s. It featured the largest, and most glorious, acoustic of the tour. We finished in Siesta Key, Florida, in the 27-degree heat – with some beach football, Gents versus Choristers, before our last concert. There were life-long memories made that the boys, girls, men and women will draw on and return to often, and a terrific social cohesion cemented within the group who have done these extraordinary things together.”
The Choir of St John’s College was founded in the 1670s. It is made up of boy and girl Choristers who are educated at St John’s College School and altos, tenors and basses who are mostly members of St John’s and other colleges that make up the University of Cambridge. The Choir’s primary purpose is to enhance the liturgy and worship at seven services each week during term time in the College’s beautiful Gilbert Scott chapel.
Lament & Liberation can be purchased from the Signum Records website.