A former vocalist with the famous King's Singers, Nigel Short founded the Tenebrae Choir in 2001. This choir combines vocal virtuosity with a high degree of precision, using atmosphere and light to create a new perspective for the audience during their concerts. The ensemble sings a familiar repertoire whilst commissioning new works from composers from all walks of life. For their fourth 'Christmas album', they’ve chosen to surround Benjamin Britten's A Ceremony of Carols with new pieces, some written exclusively for them by both male and female composers.
It was in the midst of the war—whilst sailing from the United States to England on a Swedish freighter threatened by German submarines—that Britten composed his famous cycle for children's choir, to be delicately accompanied by the harp. Paradoxically, the work was premiered by a women's choir, but the composer recorded it in its original version in 1958. The simplicity of the twelve parts of A Ceremony of Carols soon became part of the English choral repertoire. Presented here is a masterfully refined female version, featuring a young boy treble (soprano).
This beautiful chiaroscuro album begins with ‘The Shepherd’s Carol’, composed by Bob Chilcott in memory of his own experience as a boy singer at King's College Cambridge during the magical Christmas period. Other pieces in this typically British programme include ‘In Winter’s House’, an angelic new piece for five singers composed by Joanna Marsh in 2019 for Tenebrae, and ‘Vox dicentis’, the beautiful Advent anthem composed by Cambridge College organist and composer Edward Woodall Naylor in 1911. © François Hudry/Qobuz