The choir are doing a CD recording this weekend, of lesser-known choral works by Howells. We’ve got a mass setting and a batch of anthems to record – with sessions on Friday night, all day Saturday, and Sunday afternoon.
However, we’re not recording in the cathedral itself. Any visitor to one of our services would be able to tell you about the traffic noise and sirens of passing emergency services vehicles – and as such, it’s almost impossible to get a ‘clean’ take of a piece. And editing together lots of bits from multiple takes gets a bit too complicated and expensive. So we’re all decamping to a church in the Dublin suburbs, which should hopefully be free of extraneous noise.
This is my first recording with the cathedral choir, and I’m rather looking forward to it. I’ve done a couple of CDs with other groups, but I guess you would call most of them vanity recordings, rather than commercial releases.
And best of all for me, I get to do a solo on it. However, it’s only about a dozen notes long, so you could possibly miss it if you cough.
Recorded Works
Here’s a list of some of the Howells works we recorded; some or all or which may make it onto the final CD, due to be released on the Signum Records label in a few months:
- Missa Aedis Christi
- Thee Will I Love
- I Love All Beauteous Things
- Sweetest Of Sweets
- Heac Dies
- A Maid Peerless
- Hills Of The North