about fourteen singers by the end of term. During the vacation, since there were many students in residence and restrictions were relaxed, we celebrated Easter Day with the three singers (two sopranos and an alto) who were permitted with an in-person congregation. They sang the plainsong Missa De Angelis, and two arrangements that I made specially for the day, ‘This Joyful Eastertide’ and ‘Now the Green Blade Riseth’.
PART THREE
Hugh Laurie with the Chapel choir during the recording session for Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?
By the beginning of the Easter Term, the NHS’s incredible vaccination campaign was thriving and the majority of students, including all but two overseas members of the choir, were able to return to Cambridge. We resumed our normal three-services-perweek pattern and we also managed a number of extra-liturgical activities, the likes of which this year’s choir had not yet experienced. We provided some music for an Agatha Christie adaptation directed by Hugh Laurie, who came to College for the recording session. Later in the term some of the choir took part as ‘supporting artists’ (a.k.a. ‘extras’) in the filming, with hair and make-up done 1930s-style. If you watch Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? on the BBC in 2022, do look out for us. We survived the extended Tripos period thanks to the flexibility we had learned through the preceding two terms, which allowed us to sing evensong even if only half the choir was present. After term ended, activities included our first-ever live BBC Radio 3 broadcast of choral evensong. We also pre-recorded a second service which was broadcast a few weeks later. We spent three evenings in Ely Cathedral recording the first volume of the Multitude of Voyces anthology of liturgical music by female composers, which will be released on Regent Records and on social media in the coming months. We recorded a concert for a festival in Hamilton, Ontario, at which we were meant to be singing live, but obviously could not. A highlight of our final few days included singing outside on a beautiful summer evening for the Lyttleton Dinner, and a black-tie choir dinner. Our farewell video of the gorgeous James Erb arrangement of ‘Shenandoah’ received over a thousand views in its first twenty-four hours online.
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