It’s a first for Portsmouth Cathedral Choir this Christmas, the featured choir for the Christmas edition of the BBC Music Magazine.
Portsmouth Cathedral Choir feature in BBC Music Magazine
The boy and girl choristers, lay clerks and choral scholars and the Band of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines Collingwood met for three intense recording sessions at the end of September to record a selection of eighteen advent and Christmas carols with Signum Records.
The recording engineers worked hard to compete editing and mastering over the following few weeks along with producer, composer and Portsmouth choir member, George Richford.
George explained his multiple roles:
“First of all, I wrote some fanfares for this CD, in the capacity as a composer. But it also included the band of Collingwood which included some of my former trainees. And it also featured Portsmouth Cathedral Choir with whom I sing. And fourthly, I was producing it. I do a lot of producing for various different record labels, from Signum through to Convivium Records. So I had four different hats on.
“This was an excellent opportunity to combine these various forces. But this is a particularly exciting project simply because of the reach of BBC Music magazine, which I think has got a circulation of about 75,000 – that’s pretty significant for any classical music publication.”
The magazine is out now and the CD can be found on the shelves of WH Smith and is available on the BBC Music Magazine app. Copies are also available to buy at Portsmouth’s Christmas Fayre and from the Cathedral’s music department.
