Giles Swayne: Convocation

GILES SWAYNE CONVOCATION

THE NATIONAL YOUTH CHOIR OF GREAT BRITAIN LAUDIBUS

MICHAEL BONAVENTURE ORGAN

STEPHEN WALLACE COUNTER-TENOR

MIKE BREWER

GILES SWAYNE CONVOCATION

THE NATIONAL YOUTH CHOIR OF GREAT BRITAIN LAUDIBUS

MICHAEL BONAVENTURE ORGAN

PHILIPPA DAVIES FLUTE

STEPHEN WALLACE COUNTER-TENOR

MIKE BREWER

1. The Coming of Saskia Hawkins, [4:11] Op. 51 (1987)*

2. Magnificat I, Op. 33 (1982)[4:22]

Julian Forbes tenor

Joanna Goldsmith soprano

Ben Thapa tenor

3. The Tiglet, Op. 68a (1995) [2:43]

Martha McLorinan alto

Hannah Sawle soprano

4. Vidit suum dulcem natum from [2:19] Four Passiontide Motets, Op. 95a (2003/04)*

5. A Convocation of Worms,[20:00] Op. 67 (1995)*

6. Eia, mater! [4:21] from Four Passiontide Motets*

Tom Appleton bass

Jo Goldsmith soprano

Martha McLorinan alto

Robert Mecnardi tenor

7. Winter Solstice Carol, Op. 79 (1998) [5:19]

Felicity Brown soprano

8. Midwinter, Op. 91 (2003)*[6:39]

Kathy Banister alto

Anne-Marie Cullum soprano

Julian Forbes tenor

Christopher Jay bass

9. Fac me cruce custodiri [3:39] from Four Passiontide Motets*

Joanna Goldsmith soprano

Alex Hargreaves bass

Edward Lee tenor

Martha McLorinan alto

10. Dona nobis pacem [4:01] from Four Passiontide Motets*

Tom Appleton bass

Martha McLorinan alto

Hannah Sawle soprano

Ben Thapa tenor

Missa Tiburtina, Op. 40 (1985/86)

11. Kyrie[4:09]

Beth Mackay alto

12. Gloria[2:02]

Tom Appleton bass

Quintilla Hughes soprano

Martha McLorinan alto

Ben Thapa tenor

13. Sanctus[3:05]

Quintilla Hughes soprano

Martha McLorinan alto

14. Benedictus[4:22]

15. Agnus Dei[4:05]

16. Dona nobis pacem[3:11]

Total playing time[78:40]

Michael Bonaventure organ (tracks 1 & 5)

Philippa Davies flute (track 7)

Laudibus (tracks 3, 6-8)

The National Youth Choir of Great Britain (tracks 2, 4, 9-16)

Stephen Wallace counter-tenor (track 5)

*World premiere recordings

Photography: © 2006 Delphian Records Ltd

Photograph editing: Dr Raymond Parks

The Coming of Saskia Hawkins, Op. 51 (1987)

Magnificat I, Op. 33 (1982)

The Tiglet, Op. 68a (1995)

Vidit suum dulcem natum from Four Passiontide Motets, Op. 95a (2003/04)

A Convocation of Worms, Op. 67 (1995)

Eia, mater! from Four Passiontide Motets

Winter Solstice Carol, Op. 79 (1998)

Midwinter, Op. 91 (2003)

Fac me cruce custodiri from Four Passiontide Motets

Dona nobis pacem from Four Passiontide Motets

Missa Tiburtina, Op. 40 (1985/86)

Kyrie eleison

Gloria Sanctus

Benedictus

Agnus Dei

Dona nobis pacem

Among his contemporaries, and not just in Britain, Giles Swayne is one of the most prolific, imaginative and challenging composers of choral music. Writing for choirs has been a strand running through his whole career: he says that as most choirs consist of amateurs with a wide range of experience of life, or of young people with their lives ahead of them, ‘they deserve absolutely the best composers can offer them’. One of his earliest acknowledged works, a set of Shakespeare Songs for chorus, was composed when he was studying at the Royal Academy of Music after graduating from Trinity College, Cambridge. His major breakthrough work was CRY, an epic 80-minute ‘hymn to Creation’ for 28 voices and electronics, first performed by the BBC Singers in 1980. Nineteen years later it gained a more troubled and complex sequel, with additional solo and instrumental parts, in HAVOC. Other major choral works have included Ophelia Drowning, with flute (derived from a long-projected opera on Shakespeare’s Hamlet), The Silent Land for forty voices with cello, and two acappella pieces from which selfcontained excerpts are included on this disc, The Tiger and Stabat mater.

discerned. The text is always projected clearly, sometimes supplemented by percussive vocal effects from explosive syllables like those in ‘scat’ singing. The harmonies cover a wide range, from tight clusters and sharp discords to the common chords of hymn-tune harmony, albeit deployed in unexpected progressions. And metre and rhythm never provide a passive framework, but are always an active component of a work, with frequent use of syncopation, quintuple and septuple time, and rapidly changing metres. Often, too, different rhythmic patterns are superimposed in complex interlocking textures.

of his choral works, so that even when they set texts associated with Christian worship the attitude towards the beliefs these embody is one not of simple acceptance, but of troubled questioning and sometimes head-on denial.

Although Swayne’s writing for choir is naturally responsive to the subject-matter of each piece and the abilities of the intended performers, some common factors can be

Such textures are characteristic of African music, which has been a major influence on Swayne – experienced initially in recordings of the ancient Ba-Benzele pygmies, and later at first hand. He made an extended visit to Senegal and the Gambia in the early 1980s, and spent much of the 1990s living in a village in Ghana. His experiences there left him with a burning desire to emulate the natural, integral role that African music plays in everyday activities and rituals – something in which he sees the elemental and communal act of choral singing as crucial. His sojourns in Africa also left him full of anger at the degradation of so many human lives, and of the natural world, by carelessness, intolerance, war and greed. These feelings underpin many

Probably the best known of Swayne’s choral works is the Magnificat I, the earlier of his two settings of the familiar Evensong canticle. It was written for the Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford in 1982, when Swayne was, he says, ‘still reeling’ from his first direct experience of African music. Like several of his works of the 1980s, it is based entirely on a single mode, in this case the seven notes corresponding to the scale of D major. The exuberant opening phrase, which returns later, is a quotation from a southern Senegalese work song; and there are passages of crisp, crackling interlocking rhythms, with more sustained melodies threaded through them. The layout of two four-part choirs, with occasional soloists, is used to create a great variety of textures. For example, at the end the lower voices of the two choirs interchange ‘Amens’ before uniting in dry, muttered unison, while high above them the trebles or sopranos float an overlapping line, eventually thinning out to a solo voice – a reminder that the canticle was in its Biblical origin the song of the Virgin Mary herself in response to the Annunciation.

The more substantial Missa Tiburtina, a setting of the Latin Mass without the ‘Credo’, was written in 1985 for a youth choir concert presented in London by the International Kodály Society, and revised (with an added ‘Gloria’) the following year. The title refers to the fact that Swayne wrote the work during a stay in Tivoli (known in Latin as Tibur), near Rome. But the piece itself was written in reaction to the first Eritrean famine of the 1980s, and more generally to the fact that starvation in the Third World is, as Swayne says in a preface to the score, ‘the inevitable consequence of our own prosperity’. He describes the Mass as ‘emphatically not a conventionally Christian piece’, but as ‘a prayer for sanity, an appeal to a higher authority, a cry in the wilderness to a god who may or may not be there’, and ‘angrily critical of the intolerance, injustice and corruption of our world and those who control it’. In musical terms, he conceived the work as a representation of an African community, going through the motions of Christian worship in the ‘Gloria’, disrupting the pieties of the ‘Sanctus’ with grotesque interjections, bursting out in a joyfully rhythmic ‘Hosanna’ when the ‘Benedictus’ seems to be over, and contributing to the ‘Agnus Dei’ as separate groups of old men, young women and so on, before uniting for the ‘Dona nobis pacem’. The language is not quite as simple as that of the Magnificat, with

the ‘Kyrie’ at one point breaking out from chanted octaves into a screaming semitone cluster, angular chromatic canons for four solo voices superimposed on the monotone of the ‘Gloria’, and some harsh clashes in the two-part passages of the ‘Agnus Dei’. But most of the harmonies are unsullied major and minor chords, including every step in the subtly graded ascent of the ‘Dona nobis pacem’ to its ringing climax, and every component of the more fragmented aftermath – until the final cadence with its more ambiguous bare fifths.

It was inevitable that Swayne should one day tackle the poetry of William Blake, with its contempt for conventional forms of religion and its sense of the divine in the natural world. In 1995, in response to a commission from the International Forum for Contemporary Choral Music, he made a setting of Blake’s wellknown poem The Tiger, augmented by other material; it was first performed by the National Youth Chamber Choir, conducted by Michael Brewer, in Strasbourg in October 1995. At the centre of the 15-minute piece is a compressed setting of five of the six stanzas of the poem, which Swayne realised could also stand alone, and which he gave the diminutive title The Tiglet. The poem is set in bare octaves, mostly in changing 7/8 and 5/8 metres, accompanied by percussive bass syllables, finger-clicks and foot-stamps, and interspersed

with wild syllabic interjections, half sung and half shouted, by six soloists. But in the lastbut-one stanza the roles are reversed, with soloists taking over the poem and the main choir shouting, before harmony appears briefly at the all-sung climax.

In 1998, Swayne was offered the coveted commission for a new carol for the famous Christmas Eve Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols in the Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge. The Winter Solstice Carol proved a characteristically unconventional response, both in partnering the College Choir with a solo flute (also played on that occasion by Philippa Davies), and in being based on a poem by Swayne himself which calls traditional Christian belief into question. The setting of this poem, full of chill dissonances, is interleaved with the words and music of the Christmas Day plainchant antiphon ‘Hodie Christus natus est’, sung in canon by the sopranos. Finally the last stanza of the poem, on the idea of the birth of a new life and a new year, converges with the rejoicing of the plainchant, resulting in a joyful 7/8 time ‘Alleluia’ and a reflective coda. And meanwhile the solo flute, representing an individual rather than a communal voice, swoops and soars like a bird above bare winter fields.

Another short Christmas piece, Midwinter, was written in 2003, rather incongruously during a holiday on the Greek island of Paxos. Christina Rossetti’s familiar hymn ‘In the bleak midwinter’ is set for unaccompanied choir, opening out into eight and more parts for the drifts of harmony at ‘snow on snow on snow’, the intricate rhythmic counterpoint at ‘heaven and earth shall flee away’, the shining climactic chords at ‘Lord God almighty!’, and the subtly coloured combination of soloists and tutti in the last stanza, before finally concentrating all its fervour on to a single soprano line.

In the same year, 2003, Swayne began composing an extended unaccompanied setting of the mediaeval Latin sequence Stabat mater; it was completed the following year, and first performed at the 2004 Bath Festival by the Bath Camerata under Nigel Perrin. The poem describes the grief of the Virgin Mary at the Crucifixion, and in re-reading it Swayne was struck by the fact that to this day ‘men, women and children are still dying violent, unnecessary deaths in Palestine and Israel, and their mothers are still mourning and burying them’. Accordingly, he interspersed it with stanzas of the Jewish and Muslim burial services, ‘to create a communal ritual of grief’. Musically, the work alternates between passages of unison chant and choral sections, four of which Swayne later extracted as a cycle of Four Passiontide Motets. They are

austere in language, recalling the motets of the Renaissance in their alternation of chordal writing and imitative polyphony if not in their metrical suppleness. ‘Vidit suum dulcem natum’ represents the moment of Jesus’s dying breath with little downward slides for solo soprano and alto and a numb repeated rhythm in the full choir. ‘Eia, mater!’ sets four soloists against the full choir, with the opening words as a varied refrain. The fervent prayer ‘Fac me cruce custodiri’ again uses four soloists, with the alto at the end representing the ‘desperate but proud’ mother. In the parent Stabat mater, it is followed immediately by the final ‘Dona nobis pacem’, once more with four soloists: this combines the prayer for peace of the Latin Mass with its equivalent in Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus himself.

The later of the two works without chorus on this disc is A Convocation of Worms for counter-tenor and organ: it was composed in 1995 to a commission from the organist Matthew Owens, who gave the first performance with Stephen Wallace at St Peter’s, Eaton Square in London in August 1996. The title is borrowed from Hamlet, but the text itself is adapted from the 15th-century Coventry Miracle Plays. Amidst the feasting at Herod’s court following the Massacre of the Innocents, the figure of Death appears, strikes the king

and his courtiers dead, and delivers a chilling speech about his power over all living things. Swayne was struck by the modern resonances of this speech, especially in Africa where he had ‘become inured to the deaths of people of all ages from diseases which with a little money and skill could have been easily treated’. Twelve-note fanfares precede the stark setting of the Latin stage- description, and return to introduce the speech itself. This is set in powerful rising and falling curves, with a graphic accompaniment, including at one point a canonic wriggling of worms, to suggest the mediaeval Dance of Death.

Swayne wrote The Coming of Saskia Hawkins, for solo organ, in 1987 to celebrate the birth of the daughter of friends. It is based on the first of a pair of pieces for chorus and organ written earlier the same year on the plainchant ‘Veni creator spiritus’.

The chant melody is heard as a Prelude, its four lines collapsed into two phrases of twopart counterpoint, and thereafter generates the main melodic and harmonic material of the piece, which is offset by bright chromatic decorative figuration. The piece is one of several Swayne has written over the years welcoming new-born children to the world –among them his first orchestral work, Orlando’s Music, for his own son. Here, a resounding statement of the chant towards

the end appears to suggest that the ‘creator spirit’, or more generally the spirit of creation, may provide some answer to the problems posed by the darker aspects of our world. But, as so often in Giles Swayne’s music, the ending sounds more like a question.

Anthony Burton © 2006

Anthony Burton spent fifteen years on the production staff of BBC Radio 3 (where in 1980 he was responsible for the commissioning and first performances of Giles Swayne's CRY), before leaving in 1989 to become a freelance writer and broadcaster on a wide range of music.

With thanks to Michael Harris, Matthew Owens, Fiona Southey, and Sam Wilcock.

Magnificat I

Magnificat anima mea Dominum et exsultavit spiritus meus in Deo salutari meo quia respexit humilitatem ancillae suae; ecce enim ex hoc beatam me dicent omnes generationes, quia fecit mihi magna qui potens est et sanctum nomen ejus; et misericordia ejus a progenie in progenies timentibus eum.

Fecit potentiam in brachio suo; dispersit superbos mente cordis sui. Deposuit potentes de sede et exaltavit humiles.

Esurientes implevit bonis, et divites dimisit inanes.

Suscepit Israel puerum suum, recordatus misericordiae suae, sicut locutus est ad patres nostros, Abraham et semini ejus in saecula. Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto, sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

My soul doth magnify the Lord: and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For he hath regarded: the lowliness of his hand-maiden.

For behold, from henceforth: all generations shall call me blessed.

For he that is mighty hath magnified me: and holy is his Name.

And his mercy is on them that fear him: throughout all generations.

He hath shewed strength with his arm: he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He hath put down the mighty from their seat: and hath exalted the humble and meek.

He hath filled the hungry with good things: and the rich he hath sent empty away.

He remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel: as he promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed, for ever.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.

St Luke Ch 2 vv 29-32

3 The Tiglet Tiger, tiger, burning bright

In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? What dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears, And water'd heaven with their tears, Did He smile His work to see?

Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright

In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

William Blake. 1757–1827

4.Vidit suum dulcem natum

Vidit suum dulcem natum morientem, desolatum, cum emisit spiritum.

5 A Convocation of Worms

Hic, dum buccinant, Mors interficat Herodem et milites; Et diabolus recipiat eos. Mors!

I am sent from God

Death is my name

All thing that is on ground I wield at my will Both man and beast, And birdës wild and tame. When that I come them to. With death I do them kill; Kill!

Herb, grass, and trees, I take them all in same. Yah!

Where I smite, there is no grace, Yah! For Death can no sport. No! Yah!

After my stroke, man hath no space to make amends for his trespass.

But God grant him some comfort. All men dwelling upon the ground, Beware of me, by mine counsel, For faint fellowship in me is found.

Virgin above all other virgins, do not be harsh to me: let me weep with you.

Here, while the trumpets play, Death should kill Herod and his soldiers, and the Devil should receive them Death!

For be a man never so sound of health, In hearte never so well, I come suddenly within a stound. When men make most merry fare, Then suddenly I cast them in care, And slay them even indeed. Though I be naked and poor of array, And wormes gnaw me all about, Yet look you dread me night and day, For when Death cometh, You stand in doubt. Amonges worms as I you tell Under the earthë shall you dwell, And they shall eat both flesh and fell, As they have done me. Death is my name.

6 Eia, mater!

Eia, mater, fons amoris, me sentire vim doloris fac, ut tecum lugeam; Fac ut ardeat cor meum in amando Christum Deum, ut sibi complaceam.

Oh mother, fount of love, let me feel the force of your sorrow, so that I may mourn with you; Make my heart burn with the love of Christ the God, so that I may be pleasing to him.

Trans. Giles Swayne

Trans. Giles Swayne

7 Winter Solstice Carol

Now, at the dead end of the year, The nights are long, the days are cold

We cry for help, but who will hear?

The sky is dumb. Our gods are tired and old

Hodie Christus natus est Hodie Salvator apparuit

Our world spins round its dying star, Poisoned by folly, fear, and greed; And in our darkest hour of need

We dream sweet dreams of rescue from afar

Hodie in terra canunt angeli, Laetentur archangelie…

But now the old year is reborn

The withered tree springs new and green

A baby’s laighter greets the dawn

Today love’s oldest miracle is seen

Hodie exsulatant justi…

Gloria in excelsis Deo, Alleluia

English text: Giles Swayne

Latin from the Magnificat antiphone for the second verspers of Christmas

8 Midwinter

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, In the bleak midwinter, long ago. Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain; Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign. In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ. Enough for Him, Whom cherubim, worship night and day, Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay; Enough for Him, Whom angels fall before, The ox and ass and camel which adore. Angels and archangels may have gathered there, Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air; But His mother only, in her maiden bliss, Worshipped the beloved with a kiss. What can I give Him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb; If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part; Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

Christina Rossetti, 1872

9 Fac me cruce custodiri from Four Passiontide Motets

Fac me cruce custodiri, morte Christi praemuniri, confoveri gratia; Quando corpus morietur, fac ut animae donetur Paradisi gloria.

May I be protected by the cross, forearmed by Christ's death, and cherished in God's grace; When my body dies, may my soul receive the glory of Paradise.

10 Fac me cruce custodiri from Four Passiontide Motets

Dona nobis pacem . . .

Wa saläämu alèikum . . .

Ve shalom alèinu . . .

Yehé shelamà . . .

Give us peace . . .

And peace be upon you . . .

And peace be upon you . . .

Let there be peace . . .

Trans. Giles Swayne

Trans. Giles Swayne

Gloria in excelsis Deo et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.

Laudamus te. Benedicimus te. Adoramus te. Glorificamus te.

Gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam.

Domine Deus, Rex caelestis, Deus Pater omnipotens.

Domine Fili unigenite, Jesu Christe;

Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Filius Patris. Qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.

Qui tollis peccata mundi, suscipe deprecationem nostram.

Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris, miserere nobis.

Quoniam tu solus Sanctus, tu solus Dominus, tu solus Altissimus, Jesu Christe.

Cum Sancto Spiritu in gloria Dei Patris. Amen.

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will. We praise thee. We bless thee. We adore thee. We glorify thee.

We give thee thanks for thy great glory.

Lord God, heavenly King, God the Father Almighty.

Lord, the only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ;

Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.

Who takest away the sins of the world, receive our prayer.

Who sittest at the right hand of the Father, have mercy upon us.

For thou only art Holy, thou only art Lord, thou only art Most High, Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God the Father. Amen.

Sanctus & Benedictus Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus.

Dominus Deus Sabaoth: Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloria tua. Hosanna in excelsis.

Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini: Hosanna in excelsis.

Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts.

Heaven and earth are full of thy glory. Hosanna in the highest.

Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord: Hosanna in the highest.

15 Agnus Dei

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem.

Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.

Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.

Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, grant us peace.

16 Dona nobis pacem

Give us peace

Left: Laudibus in Delphian sessions with Mike Brewer

Bottom left: Stephen Wallace records A Convocation of Worms

Middle: Mike Brewer rehearses the NYCGB

Below: Delphian Producer, Paul Baxter (left), and NYC Associate Conductor, Greg Beardsell.

Mike Brewer is in demand worldwide for vocal and conducting workshops and guest conducting of choirs. In 2006-7 his tours take in Mexico, Venezuela, Peru, the USA, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia and the Seychelles. He is Adviser on world music to the IFCM.

Mike is consultant for over 20 prize winning UK choirs. He has often served as adjudicator for the finals of Choir of the Year and the National Festival of Music for Youth in the UK and in international competitions.

Since 1983 Mike has been Musical Director of the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain. He also conducts Laudibus, the award winning chamber choir of NYC graduates, which, like NYC, records on the Delphian label.

Mike Brewer’s books for Fabermusic include the best selling Kickstart your Choir, Warmups, Improve Your Sightsinging (with Paul Harris) and Finetune your Choir. Hamba Lulu, his set of African songs is performed worldwide. Newly published by Faber are Playpiece, commissioned for the Aberdeen Festival, Worldsong, performed in the Schools’ Proms 2005, and a second set of African songs, Babevuya.

Mike was a Churchill Fellow for 2002/3. He was appointed OBE in 1995.

Michael Bonaventure, was an organ pupil of Herrick Bunney and a composition student of Judith Weir. An indefatigable exponent of new music, he has to date premiered over fifty new works for the organ by composers including Judith Weir, Avril Anderson, Lyell Cresswell, Edward McGuire, James MacMillan, Laurence Crane, Yumi Hara Cawkwell, Gabriel Jackson, and Jean-Pierre Leguay. Several of these works involved the organ with other forces. He has performed throughout the UK, including regularly in all of London's major City churches and Cathedrals, and in recital trips to Sweden, France and the USA; he has also broadcast programmes of contemporary music on BBC Radio 3, Radio Scotland and Swedish Radio. He has twice given recitals in Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, at the invitation of Jean-Pierre Leguay, several of whose organ works he has performed and broadcast for the first time in this country. His first solo CD entitled 2000 NAILS, showcasing contemporary British organ works, was released by Delphian Records in 2005 to universal critical acclaim (DCD34013). Most recently Michael has appeared on a disc of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ works (DCD34037). He is based in south London, where he is Organist of All Saints Church, Blackheath. Also active as a composer, he has produced works for organ, piano, voices & electronics.

Philippa Davies is widely regarded as one of the finest flautists performing today. Her concert appearances, broadcasts and master classes take her all over the world. A member of The Nash Ensemble, London Winds, The Davies Cole Duo, and Arpège, she has given many world premieres and a number of distinguished composers have dedicated works to her. Davies’ recordings include concertos and quartets by Mozart, a solo flute and harp disc, J.S. Bach Flute Sonatas with Maggie Cole and a disc of William Alwyn's complete flute music.

Regarded as one of the finest chamber choirs in the world, Laudibus is equally renowned both for its breadth of programming and its dynamic concert performances. Laudibus appeared with The King's Singers in their 25th anniversary concert at the Barbican, and in 1998 won both the sacred and secular sections for both amateur and professional vocal ensembles in the prestigious Tolosa International Choral Competition in Spain. Festival appearances have included Aldburgh, Bath, Harrogate, Hexham and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Noted for its exceptional performances of uncompromising contemporary music, Laudibus has premiered works by many leading British composers: amongst them Gavin Bryars, Giles Swayne and Richard Allain. Laudibus has been widely recorded and broadcast. Recent engagements include a Proms appearance with the National Youth Orchestra, the National Holocaust memorial service, and concerts at London’s Southbank Centre. 2007 will see Laudibus’s third appearance on Delphian Records – a disc of Song of Songs settings (DCD34042).

Mike Brewer Michael Bonaventure Laudibus

The National Youth Choir of Great Britain

went on to become a best-seller and Classic FM’s record of the week. This, the choir’s second recording with Delphian Records, marks an ongoing relationship with the company. Amongst others, a recording of multipart works is planned, including a premiere recording of Gabriel Jackson’s 40-part Sanctum est Verum Lumen.

Laudibus

SOPRANO 1

Joanna Goldsmith

Quintilla Hughes

Felicity Brown

SOPRANO 2

Alison Hill

Nicola Corbishley

TENOR 1

Mike Jeremiah

Robert Meinardi

Dominic Peckham

TENOR 2

Christopher Jepp

Julian Forbes

Since its inaugural concert in the Royal Albert Hall in 1983, The National Youth Choir of Great Britain has garnered an enviable reputation for being one of the most flexible vocal ensembles in the world. NYC has performed alongside many leading musicians including the King's Singers, George Shearing and Richard Rodney Bennett. Made up of up to 150 young voices, NYC meets for two residential courses each year. Concerts are given throughout the UK, and the choir tours regularly; their fifth world tour in 2003 visited Samoa, Australia, and New Zealand amongst others. In recent years they have performed music from India, South America, the Pacific Islands, Africa (with guest Ghanaian drummers), and from the gospel tradition. NYC often performs new and specially-written music; it has commissioned from and recorded works by Jonathan Harvey, Colin Riley, Paul Reade and by composer-inassociation Richard Allain. The Royal Albert Hall remains a regular concert venue; NYC performed Carl Jenkins’ Peace Mass The Armed Man which was later recorded, and

Stephen Wallace studied with Neil Howlett at the Royal Northern College of Music, Anthony Rolfe Johnson at the Britten Pears School, Snape Maltings, and now studies with Robert Dean. He has a busy schedule of opera appearances in venues throughout the world, and is a committed concert artist who has appeared on disc in such diverse repertoire as Bach's St Matthew Passion, Dido and Aeneas for Harmonia Mundi, Armindo Partenope with Christian Curnyn for Chandos, an Arvo Pärt disc for Black Box, and George Lloyd's Requiem for Albany Records.

Anne Marie Cullum

Katie Leigh

ALTO 1

Martha Mclorinan

Ruth Nixon

Katy Lee

ALTO 2

Beth Mackay

Kathy Banister

Rachel Shatliff

BASS 1

Greg Beardsell

Christopher Jay

Alexander Hargreaves

BASS 2

Andrew Vavies

Charie Hamilton

Thomas Appleton

Stephen Wallace

SOPRANO 1

Martha Benyunes-Nockolds

Heather Caddick

Sarah Denbee

Kate Done

Georgina Easton

Joanna Goldsmith˚

Roseanne Havel

Quintilla Hughes

Katy Leigh

Marie Macklin

Janna Mills

Genevieve Pott

Lucy Potterton

Leah Sears

Joanna Stevens

Laura Trowbridge

SOPRANO 2

Eleanor Bacon

Olivia Brown

Zoe Brown

Adele Clarkson

Jen Dickson

Miriam Dix

Judith Durrant

Fiona Harper

Rosalind Hind

Alison Hill˚

Katie Hockenhull

Ruth Jenkins

Bethan Moore

Holly Moore

Rachel Nutt

Sian Rogers

Hannah Sawle

Elaine Tate

Nicole Ward

Ruth Webb

ALTO 1

Chantal Clelland

Rachel Coward

Bethis Hourigan

Eve Langford

Angharad Lyddon

Andrea McGregor

Martha McLorinan

Ruth Nixon˚

Joanna Rose

Kate Thatcher

Heather White

Ellie Whittingham

Fiona Wilkie

ALTO 2

Krishanthi Gill

Amelia Hudson

Elizabeth Jarrett

Katie Lee

Beth Mackay˚

Sarah Rudebeck

Louise Wayman

TENOR 1

David Bond

Rupert Charlesworth

Sam Furness

Chris Hann

Edward Lee

Ben Thapa˚

TENOR 2

David Bellinger

Edmund Chan

John Davies

Robin Firth

Julian Forbes˚

Iain Handyside

James Lawrence

Adam Masry

Kieran Morris

Sam Piper

Luke Sinclair

Nick Spiers

BASS 1

Thomas Appleton˚

Jonathan Bell

Charles Blamire-Brown

Peter Brathwaite

Timothy Brignall

Julian Guidera

Alexander Hargreaves

Guy Hayward

Muir Hewitt

Miles Horner

Bartholomew Lawrence

David Le Prevost

Samuel Morris

Matthew Robinson

Edward Turner

BASS 2

Peter Bardsley˚

Andrew Chim

George Coltart

John Murton

Owen Peachey

James Smyth

˚ denotes section leader

Giles Swayne was born in 1946 and grew up in Liverpool and Yorkshire. He began composing at an early age, encouraged by his cousin Elizabeth Maconchy. In his teens he studied piano with Gordon Green; later teachers were Phyllis Lee, James Gibb and Vlado Perlemuter. On leaving Cambridge in 1968 he won a composition scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied with Harrison Birtwistle and Nicholas Maw. From 1971 he worked as accompanist and repetiteur, and was on the Glyndebourne music staff 1973-4. In 1976-77 he visited the Paris Conservatoire to study with his hero Olivier Messiaen.

In 1980 CRY for 28 amplified voices was premiered by the BBC Singers under John Poole. Hailed as a landmark, it has been performed twice at the Proms, and many times worldwide. The Silent Land for cello and 40part choir, premiered at the 1998 Spitalfields Festival by Raphael Wallfisch with Clare College Choir under Timothy Brown, was described by The Times as 'a masterpiece' and Swayne 'the most accomplished choral composer in Britain'. After the première of HAVOC at the Proms in September 1999 by the BBC Singers and Endymion under Stephen Cleobury, The Independent commented 'Swayne is a master'.

More recent works include Stabat mater, premiered at the 2004 Bath Festival by Bath Camerata under Nigel Perrin, Sonata for cello and piano, commissioned by the 2006 Cheltenham Festival, and Sinfonietta concertante, commissioned for the Jeune Orchestre Atlantique for premiere in Bruges in November 2006. Swayne is now working on his First Symphony, commissioned by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales for premiere in November 2007. He teaches composition at the University of Cambridge.

New Music on Delphian

Richard Allain: When I’m Gone

John Harle, Soprano saxophone

National Youth Choir of Great Britain

Laudibus

Mike Brewer, Conductor

DCD34026

Allain has developed a unique musical dialect malleable enough to cover the gamut of liturgical purposes represented on this disc. Whether refracted through the facets of spiritual, carol, motet or Mass setting, his is a music that can only be added to the list of languages from which we should all take inspiration.

’One of the hits of the week for me … startlingly impressive.’

– BBC Radio 3 CD Review, July 2004

Gabriel Jackson: Sacred Choral Works

Choir of St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh

Matthew Owens, Conductor; Susan Hamilton, Soprano

Michael Bonaventure, Solo Organ; Simon Nieminski, Organ

DCD34027

The culmination of a four-year association between the choir of St Mary’s Cathedral and British Composer Award winner Gabriel Jackson, this disc presents eight world premiere recordings. Whether gentle and meditative, brilliantly exuberant, or soaring in ecstatic contemplation, Jackson’s vividly communicative music is brought thrillingly to life by a choir at the peak of its powers.

‘Owens has trained this choir to an exceptionally high level and the sound can only be described as luxurious.’

– Gramophone, December 2005