The Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge, presents Lament & Liberation, the first recording under Director of Music Christopher Gray
- Recording includes Gray’s first commission for the Choir, Joanna Marsh’s triptych Echoes in Time
- Other commissions on the recording include Helena Paish’s The Annunciation and Martin Baker’s Ecce ego Ioannes
- Sir James MacMillan’s Cantos Sagrados and works by Roxanna Panufnik and Dobrinka Tabakova also feature
Released on Friday 16 May 2025
The Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge, announces its first recording under Director of Music Christopher Gray, Lament & Liberation, to be released on the St John’s Cambridge imprint on Signum Records. Featuring multiple commissions for the Choir conceived with the distinctive environment of St John’s Chapel and organ in mind, the recording is a bold statement for Gray’s ambitions with the Choir and continues the College’s well-established tradition of championing new music.
Lament & Liberation features the premiere recording of Gray’s first commission for the Choir, Joanna Marsh’s triptych Echoes in Time. Setting poetry by Malcolm Guite, the works cover themes including conflict, seeking refuge, and the environment, highlighting how liturgical music, while timeless, can tackle contemporary issues. The pieces were commissioned for key dates in the liturgical calendar – the opening piece The Hidden Light was premiered at the Choir’s iconic Advent Carol Service in 2023, Refugee for the Epiphany Carol Service, and final movement Still to Dust for the Lent Meditation service.
Two other recent commissions for the Choir feature on the recording, including Helena Paish’s The Annunciation – commissioned and premiered by the Choir in 2024, the piece adapts Edwin Muir’s poem which depicts the meeting of the Angel Gabriel and the virgin Mary. Former Director of Music at Westminster Cathedral, Martin Baker, has written organ prelude Ecce ego Ioannes specifically for this recording, which makes reference to St John’s vision of the world’s annihilation with the opening of the seventh seal.
Baker’s work acts as a prelude to Sir James MacMillan’s triptych Cantos Sagrados, which sets poems by Ariel Dorfman and Ana Maria Mendoza about political repression in Latin America alongside traditional religious Latin texts. Considered one of MacMillan’s most powerful works, the piece is also noted for its virtuosic organ part, performed here by Herbert Howells Organ Scholar Alexander Robson.
The recording opens with Deus, Deus meus by Roxanna Panufnik – recent recipient of the Ivor Classical Awards ‘Outstanding Works Collection’ accolade – taken from her Westminster Mass and closes with another Ivors Classical Award winner, Dobrinka Tabakova, with her Turn our captivity, O Lord to end the recording on a reassuring note.
The album artwork, Sarajevo, Aleppo, Mariupol… the list goes on by Phil Whiting, was first encountered by Christopher Gray during an exhibition at Truro Cathedral – feeling that the work confronted some of the worst horrors of humanity with the same uncompromising honesty as the music and poetry on this recording, he returned to the piece when seeking a suitable image for the album.
Christopher Gray, Director of Music at St John’s College, Cambridge, said: “This is an album that can be dipped into, but I hope that it will particularly reward those who choose to listen to it in its entirety. It is not for the faint-hearted. It opens with a single treble voice calling into the darkness and, while it confronts some challenging issues head-on, it ends with the profound hope that ‘They that sow in tears shall reap in joy’.”
Lament & Liberation can be pre-ordered from the Signum Records website.