Cambridge

Locus iste celebrates two milestones for the Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge: as well as 2019 marking the 150th anniversary of the consecration of the college chapel, this release is coincidentally the choir’s 100th recording – 60 years on from George Guest’s iconic first recording of ‘Hear my prayer’ for Argo, released in 1959.

A glorious collection of choral music by British composers, recorded live during services of Choral Evensong in King’s College Chapel. Popular anthems like Hubert Parry’s I was glad and Patrick Hadley’s My beloved spake are included alongside settings of the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis through the centuries. Included here are settings from Byrd’s Great Service and Weelkes’ Short Service, alongside Stanford’s setting in G and William Mathias’ Jesus College Service. Recorded between the summers of 2018 and 2019, this selection presents music from Stephen Cleobury’s last year as Director of Music at King’s College after 37 years in post.

Following from Ash Wednesday, this album is the second live Evensong album from the Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge and marks the next great season of the Church’s Year, Eastertide. This cele- bration of Jesus’s resurrection also initially spans forty days, taking us up to Ascension Day, and culmi- nates on the fiftieth day with the Feast of Pentecost. Where the previous album reflected the tradition of using no organ from Ash Wednesday until the Gloria of the Easter Vigil, the instrument is fully utilised here by the Chapel’s organ scholars Glen Dempsey and James Anderson Besant.