Fred'sNotDead

Monday morning and I'm sure you are all delighted to be back at work.

We had quite a weekend here and I thought you would like to know the details.

A choir I am a member of called "The Ecclesium Choir" was recording a CD in St Anne's Cathedral Belfast. (I always like to give it it's full official title as the current management there insist on calling it Belfast Cathedral which does not seem altogether correct - there is also a Catholic Cathedral in Belfast so how can it be Belfast Cathedral?? St George's High Street should start calling itself "Belfast Parish Church" by that logic)

Anyway I took the day off work on Saturday and we started rehearsing at 12.15pm or so. Then we went away to the Dirty Duck Pub in Holywood for lunch and started recording sessions at 4.00pm

The music for the CD is entirely Choral music with organ accompaniment in most cases, all by Richard Shepherd who is (correct me if this is wrong someone) Headmaster of the Song School at York Minster and a composer. The organ playing was admirably shared and executed beautifully by Richard and Stephen. We also had a trumpeter from the Ulster Orchestra.

The musical director of the CD was Phillip, Director of Music at St Anne's Cathedral Belfast.

Earlier in this blog I published links to two of the pieces that we recorded - these links don't actually lead to our versions of the pieces - they are earlier recordings - but they will let you hear what we were up against - there was some very challenging stuff and he is not an easy composer to sight read - but the music is so rich and so beautiful - I came away an avid fan.

Anyway there you go - the recording all went well and we will have the discs ready in the not too distant future (let's hope) I should point out that they are being published by Priory Records under their ongoing series of British Church Composer Series.