Llandaff Cathedral Choral Society (LCCS), along with friends from Penarth’s Cavatina Singers and Cheltenham Choral Society, have created a unique virtual concert of original Christmas music entitled Winter Legends, Christmas Bells.
The common link between the choirs is conductor Alex Thacker, who is musical director of all three. As well as Alex himself, LCCS is blessed to have two other composers in its midst, bass Ian Lawson and tenor Ben Heneghan. The concert features an eclectic mix of six original works by the trio. Winter Legends itself is a collection of four secular but Christmas-related songs for choir and orchestra by Heneghan, while Thacker’s own contributions, A Babe is Born and Cantemus in choro have a more traditional flavour. Lawson’s works include Cradle Song, featuring text by William Blake, and Christmas Bells, which has words by Longfellow.
Choir members have spent the last two months recording their individual parts at home before having them mixed together to form a combined choral performance. ‘In normal times, I would think it pretty unlikely that a programme of entirely new Christmas music would ever be contemplated’, says Lawson, who with Heneghan produced the final recordings in their own studio.
LCCS chairperson, Caroline Lynch-Blosse, is delighted with how the project has helped keep the choirs together and how everyone has embraced new technologies to make it happen, ‘The choirs have been wholly behind this complex project and the results promise to be spectacular and uplifting- we very much hope that everyone will find something exciting and intriguing in this event’.
Visit https://llandaffcathedralchoralsociety.org/ for more details
