Crouch End Festival Chorus

All agog for Saturday's visit by Crouch End Festival Chorus to Holy Trinity Sloane Street, the incredibly beautiful arts and crafts church (with, for instance, stained glass by Burne-Jones and William Morris) in the heart of Chelsea.

Opening the programme will be my Perotin-based motet All the Ends of the Earth. I wrote this piece for the BBC Singers in 1999, to celebrate the past, and upcoming millenium. It includes some tricky, florid writing especially for upper voices. Fine for a small vocal consort, but unlikely for a large symphonic chorus.

However, Crouch End FC must be one of the most versatile, fearless choral groups around, and they're going to tackle this music on a very large scale; it feels like a new world premiere. I had the pleasure recently of speaking on Zoom, visible here, to conductor David Temple, who first assembled this choir in his North London neighbourhood forty years ago. If any fellow composers see this post, he has some interesting and encouraging things to say about writing for symphonic chorus. He's not a fan of "easy listening" and insists that the composer's ideas should take precedence, even if they're initially difficult to achieve. Bravo!

PICTURED: from St George's Cathedral, Southwark.