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choral music

Ave Verum Corpus: a silver lining story

This is the true story of a little piece of music called ‘Ave Verum Corpus’. If you are a fan of choral music, you’ll probably be familiar with the text ‘Ave Verum Corpus’. If you sing in a choir, you might have performed settings by Mozart, William Byrd, or Elgar.  ‘Ave Verum Corpus’ was the first piece that I wrote for the Gallery Choir of the Church of Saint Mary Magdalene back in March 2007, and it’s a classic tale of ‘a cloud with a silver lining’. On a dark Thursday night, one of those monstrous March snowstorms descended on… Read More »Ave Verum Corpus: a silver lining story

Resound choir

‘Songs My Mother Taught Me’

When Thomas Burton asked me to compose a new choral piece for ‘RESOUND’  on the theme of motherhood, it did not take me long to find the perfect text. My mum, Shirley Martin, turned 90 last April and my sister Cori Martin wrote a poem in her honour entitled ‘Mother’. That is the text and the resulting choral piece you will hear on Saturday March 25, 2023 in Port Perry, Ontario at the historic Town Hall Theatre. Thomas Burton, conductor and collaborative pianist Cheryl Duvall will premiere ‘Mother’ for SATB choir and piano. Two other new works will also premiere on… Read More »‘Songs My Mother Taught Me’

Winter Walk

The Year Without Music

When the German critic Oscar Schmitz called England ‘das Land ohne Musik’ that was not true. My blog headline is similarly inaccurate. Yes, 2020-21 has been a year without live music and it’s been devastating. But there has been innovation and creativity bubbling away under the surface. Conductors, patrons, performers, researchers, composers and technicians have been working on projects with confidence that live music will come back into our lives once this blasted pandemic has passed. Solitude does have its advantages. For some people, isolation is fuel for creative fire. I’m one of those for whom hacking out music alone… Read More »The Year Without Music

Pax Christi Chorale

Blest pair of sirens

Stand on a street corner in Toronto and you may see architectural vestiges of our Victorian past; extravagantly crafted stone treasures, surrounded by modern towers of concrete, glass and steel. In a similar musical landscape, Pax Christi Chorale commissions new music, but in a fast-changing world, we take a second look at pieces once unjustly judged as unfashionable. On Sunday October 19 at 3pm, we will blow the dust off this seminal repertoire at Grace Church on-the Hill in Toronto. Our choral scholars, orchestra, and special guests, the Aslan Boys Choir will be joined by actor Emilio Vieira, who will… Read More »Blest pair of sirens

Composer’s craft

Voces Capituli, a men’s choir in Antwerp, have been singing my music for a while in their beautiful church in Belgium. They took some of my liturgical music on tour to Rome this summer. I have never met any of them, but I correspond with their conductor, Dirk Maes, and he sent me this photo of St. Laurence church where they sing regularly, on the other side of the world. Many of the men in the choir are former choirboys at the cathedral in Antwerp. Needless to say they are all grown up now and have their own website. Click… Read More »Composer’s craft

What is a hymn?

I suppose you cannot really understand what a hymn is all about unless you’ve had a personal encounter with a hymn, maybe singing with hundreds of people in a vast cathedral to the visceral accompaniment of a mighty organ, or maybe picking out the notes on your ancient piano on a quiet Sunday evening with your sister singing alto to your soprano. If you’ve ever been singing a hymn and had a moment where the music just gets to you, and a few of the notes choke your voice just a bit, and you have to pretend nothing happened but… Read More »What is a hymn?

The blog days of summer

Out of the blue, while holidaying in the fabulous fresh air of friendly British Columbia, I received an email from England. Tomorrow I’ll be going down to a Toronto studio to be interviewed for a BBC 4 radio show about Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius. That’s all because of this blog and my posts about that composer. So, I keep on blogging, even though here, on a weekend break with my parents, the Ontario summer is so hot and humid one can barely summon the strength to lift a cold beer. Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to hearing a couple of my… Read More »The blog days of summer