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Cathedral choir contributes to Coram Boy at the Festival Theatre
SussexWorld
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21/05/2024
The choir of Chichester Cathedral will be heard as part of Coram Boy, the second production on the main-house stage at Chichester Festival Theatre this summer.
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Music
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00:00
Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Always lovely
00:06
to speak to Charles Harrison, Organist and Master of the Choristers at Chichester Cathedral,
00:11
but especially so today because you've got a really exciting new project with the Festival
00:15
Theatre. Your choir, the Choristers, are contributing to the second main house production of the
00:20
Chichester Festival Theatre's summer season, Coram Boy. Now what is it that the Choristers
00:25
were asked to do through you? The play is set in the 1750s and two of the main characters
00:33
in the play are Cathedral choristers. The great George Frederick Handel also makes a
00:38
brief appearance in the play. So music is a thread that runs through it. We were asked
00:44
to record about 50 minutes of music as part of the soundtrack for the play. So there will
00:50
be live musicians, so our contributions will be spliced in to what they're doing live during
00:59
the production. And all of this music is either inspired by 18th century pieces such as those
01:08
by Handel and Purcell, or indeed in some cases actually taken directly from their work. So
01:15
there are little excerpts from Messiah that we recorded for this.
01:18
Oh, it sounds fantastic. And was this out of the usual run of things for the choristers
01:22
to be doing this music? Yes, our usual job is to sing lots of services,
01:28
over 200 of them in the Cathedral. So anything that takes us away from that usual routine
01:35
and offers something fresh and interesting, it's always exciting to do that.
01:39
Even at the end of a long day of school? Well, it was a long day, yes. So we started
01:43
at half past six and it was a two and a half hour session. So I think we're all a bit jaded
01:47
by the end. And recordings inevitably involve lots of retaking, attention to very fine details,
01:55
the sorts of details that microphones pick up even when the human ear doesn't. So it
02:01
does call for quite high levels of concentration. The recording is a lot less forgiving, is
02:06
it then? Yes, it is. Well, typically a congregation
02:13
in the Cathedral are sitting some distance from the choir, and the Cathedral acoustics
02:16
do a wonderful job of warming up the sound and just covering over some of those little
02:21
infelicities. And there's none of that with the recording. The microphones are right in
02:25
front of us and there's absolutely nowhere to hide. So things really do have to be absolutely
02:29
spot on, rhythmic, in tune, finely polished and honed.
02:32
Fantastic. And it must mean a lot to the choristers because the Festival Theatre is a venue that
02:38
they know well, isn't it? Yes, they love the annual run of Christmas
02:43
concerts at the Theatre. They know what large audiences attend those and how many people
02:50
go there for all these main productions. So they're fully aware of how important this
02:56
is and how widely their efforts will be appreciated. Fantastic. And they enjoyed doing it, no doubt?
03:03
They certainly seemed to, yes, and that they were up for the challenge and while demanding.
03:08
And there was a lot of retaking and polishing and very tiny adjustments to be made. They
03:15
handled all that with great professionalism, even quite late into the evening. So I think
03:19
we're looking forward to hearing the results. Well, congratulations on having done it. And
03:22
it'd be lovely in the audience to sit there thinking, this is Chichester Cathedral Choir.
03:27
Fabulous. Thank you very much indeed. And good to speak to you, Charles. Thank you.
03:30
[BLANK_AUDIO]
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