A first for RSCM Scottish Voices

Our next meeting is a return to the familiar and much loved territory of St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral in Glasgow, where our Musical Director Frikki Walker is Director of Music and where a fair number of our singers are in the Cathedral Choir, to sing Choral Evensong at 4pm on Saturday 7th October 2017.

Introit: O pray for the peace of Jerusalem (Herbert Howells)
Responses: Bernard Rose
Psalm: 37 vv 1-11
Canticles: Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis in F (Peter Aston)
Anthem: Evening Hymn (Henry Balfour-Gardiner)

While the venue is very familiar to us, this will be a first for RSCM Scottish Voices since because of the recent departure to Ely of our now former Assistant Musical Director Richard Walmsley and the non-availability on this occasion of our Musical Director Frikki Walker, we will be directed and accompanied by James Kealey and Christopher Nickol respectively, the very first time that any of our meetings hasn't featured either (or more usually both) Frikki or Richard.

We are of course in safe hands, we wouldn't be so foolish as to experiment wildly. 

James has recently moved to Glasgow from Somerset where he was Senior Organ Scholar and Second Assistant at Wells Cathedral (where Frikki was previously a Vicar Choral in the choir at the same time that Richard was a Treble in the choir, small world, isn't it?) and he has taken up the position of Director of Choral Music at St Aloysius' College in Glasgow (coincidentally replacing Keith Roberts who until he moved south a few weeks ago sang countertenor in the choir of St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral under Frikki).

Christopher Nickol is quite simply legendary in choral and organ circles in Glasgow, famous for his undoubted organ playing skill but also for his party piece of being able to play anything you care to name, instantly, and without the need for music. Born in Cambridge, he was a music scholar at Ampleforth College, Organ Scholar at Royal Holloway College (University of London), and postgraduate scholar at the Royal College of Music, and is currently Director of Music at New Kilpatrick Church in Bearsden, staff pianist and organist at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, pianist at the Dance School of Scotland, accompanist of Bearsden Choir, and a regular deputy organist at both Glasgow Cathedral and Glasgow University. Christopher has performed as an organist and soloist with the BBC SSO, Caledonian Voices, Glasgow Cathedral Choir & Choral Society, Glasgow Chamber Choir, the National Youth Choir of Scotland, the RCS Chamber Choir, the RSNO and RSNO Chorus, and the choir of St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral in Glasgow. He has given over 500 concerts on the organ in Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery in Glasgow, including one that went viral on social media on the day that the death was announced of David Bowie when, without any printed music, he played Life on Mars and a mobile phone video recording of it has been viewed on Facebook alone almost 2 million times.  It's well worth a watch/listen and it can be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-35292054
or a shorter clip on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsAYfEQMGkk