News & Events

The Ex-Choristers Association will hold the biennial reunion on Sunday 5th June and Exquire (our ECA choir which includes our younger members in Abbey Singers) has been invited to sing the Service of Choral Eucharist. This is a great opportunity and a change from our usual format where we sing Choral Evensong alongside the Cathedral Choir, and I am delighted that David Ireson has agreed to conduct the choir and Andrew Parnell has agreed to play the organ for us. There is no attendance charge as the buffet lunch and drinks will be underwritten by the ECA but there will be an opportunity to contribute via a prominently placed receptacle.

The full programme for the day is likely to be as follows:

10.15 Rehearsal in the Song School
10.45 Rehearsal and seating in the Quire
11.15 Choral Eucharist – Music will be decided when numbers are known
12.45 Drinks & Buffet Lunch (with brief AGM)

There will be one rehearsal from 7.30 to 9.00pm in the Song School on Friday 3rd June.

As with all our events, success depends on the support and participation by you, the ECA members and for a Service of Choral Eucharist we will need at least 8-10 sopranos and a minimum of 4 altos, tenors and basses. I should be grateful if you would get in touch either via the Contact Us page or email me at malcolm.bury@stalbanseca.org to indicate your wish to participate by no later than Friday 29th April.

Thank you,

Malcolm Bury
Chairman

From Alexander L’Estrange, composer and friend of St Albans Cathedral Choir:

Please help spread the word about the launch concert of my new Tenebrae CD of sacred music, “On Eagles’ Wings”. It’s on Thursday 7th April, at St James’, Spanish Place in London.

After a really exciting period of writing and becoming quite well-known for my community choral works (Zimbe, Ahoy et al), I wanted to find an outlet, a “home” for all of the sacred works I’ve been commissioned to write over the last decade or so; many have been recorded individually, but never on the same disc, and so it’s just wonderful that Tenebrae, who for me really are the best chamber choir in the business, have been able to record and launch this disc.

On Wednesday 27th April 2016, the Friends of Cathedral Music (FCM) are hosting “An Evening with the Cathedral Choristers of Britain” at St Paul’s Cathedral in London – a unique concert in support of the Diamond Fund for Choristers, a £10m fund to ensure that the nation’s world-renowned cathedral music is preserved for the future.

Supported by Classic FM and presented by Aled Jones, the concert will be directed by the Director of Music at St Paul’s Cathedral, Andrew Carwood. In the 60th year of it’s founding, the FCM is anxious to resist the financial pressures faced by many cathedral choirs and maintain the 1,400 year tradition for future generations.

I would urge you most strongly to support this cause if you can.

More details can be found here: FCM press release

Malcolm Bury
Chairman

Brittany Music Workshops are offering several choral scholarships to singers aged 18 – 25 at Malcolm Archer’s Langlais Festival Choral Week in La Fontenelle, Brittany, France from 16 – 22 July. Please see www.brittanymusicworkshops.eu for full details.

The official launch of my book “The Choirs and Musicians of St Albans Cathedral” which will take place in the North Transept of the Cathedral from 7.00 pm on Thursday, 21st January 2016.

All ECA members and their spouses/partners, and parents (in the case of Abbey Singers and our younger ECA members still in secondary education) are invited to this book launch reception where there will also be a small exhibition of photographs of the Cathedral Choir, the Abbey Girls Choirs and the Abbey Singers.

Numbers may have to be limited so I should be grateful if you would please RSVP, as soon as possible, either to myself (malcolm.bury@stalbanseca.org) or to Laura Luckhurst (laura.luckhurst@stalbanscathedral.org)

Best wishes,
Malcolm Bury
Chairman

Book Synopsis:
The first chapter of the book covers the period from around 780 AD when King Offa made land available for the establishment of a Benedictine Monastery, it’s consecration in 1136, through the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539, and the establishment of the Cathedral and Abbey Church of St Alban in April 1877. Subsequent chapters document the activities and achievements of the successive Masters of the Music and the Choirs from John Stocks Booth (1855 to 1879) to Andrew Lucas (1998 to the present day). The book is not a scholastic document but rather a simple documented history of the various eras of the choirs and their directors.

Saturday 5th December 2015 at 7.30pm
High Street Methodist Church ∙ Harpenden ∙ AL5 2RU

Please support this concert by the Amici Singers and the Amici Baroque Players in this individual performance of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio.  Eight singers of this remarkable young chamber choir join with 20 of the UK’s finest period instrumentalists to recreate a ‘one-per-part’ performance of Bach’s festive masterpiece as it might have been heard in his day.

Download the poster