Music at St Mary’s
Music plays an important role in the worship at St Mary’s. A wide variety of hymns, both traditional and more modern, is used for sung services, and everyone sings the setting at the Sunday Parish Eucharist. An enthusiastic mixed-voice Parish Choir (currently around 12-15 strong) generally sings twice a month, with a rehearsals on one Friday evening each month, and before each service at which they are performing. Music sung by the choir has ranged from plainsong to recently composed works. Members of the choir act as cantors for the psalm each week. Recently, Jade-Sophia Young has been working regularly with the children of the Sunday school, to strengthen and to develop musical activities there, and the children have performed successfully at a number of All-Age worship services.
For major Festivals, vocal and instrumental soloists (and sometimes professional choirs) are employed. During 2006, professional musicians contributed to nine services, in addition to those choirs arranged to perform at weddings, funerals and memorial services (around twenty in number). Soloists in 2006 included Ana Maria Rincon soprano, Owen Willetts countertenor, Malcolm Banham tenor, Richard Fallas bass, Michael O’Donnell oboe and Stephen Keogh trumpet. On Good Friday, organ solos were used as meditations within the three—hour service, and, at Christmas, a choir of eight professional singers sang for the annual Carol Service. Singers performing at the church regularly include members of St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey choirs, the BBC Singers, Gabrieli Consort, Royal Opera House chorus and the Monteverdi Choir. This year, deputy organists have included former organ scholars from Magdalen College, Trinity College and King’s College, Cambridge.
The church has a well-maintained, two-manual Walker organ, a C. Bechstein grand piano and an electric piano. Members of the congregation are very supportive of the music at St Mary’s, taking a keen interest in the organ voluntaries and the solo and choral performances. From time to time many have attended performances by Nonsuch Singers (the London chamber choir conducted by the church’s Director of Music) at St. John’s, Smith Square and St Martin-in-the-Fields.
Graham Caldbeck
Director of Music
Graham Caldbeck read music at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was a Choral Scholar. He has worked for much of his life in education, holding posts as Director of Music in Cheshire and London, Head of the Hampshire Specialist Music Course in Winchester and at the Royal College of Music, where for fifteen years he held a succession of posts, including Head of Undergraduate Studies and Head of Individual Studies. A former Assistant Organist at St Martin-in-the-Fields, he holds both the Fellowship and choral directing diplomas from the Royal College of Organists, and has worked as an accompanist and continuo player. Whilst teaching in Winchester, he regularly sang in the choir of Winchester Cathedral and conducted Southern Voices, the chamber choir that he founded in 1984. He is currently conductor of the Somerset Chamber Choir, the Mayfield Festival Choir in E. Sussex and Nonsuch Singers, recently described by the Times as ‘one of London’s leading chamber choirs’, which regularly performs in central London. In recent years he has directed choirs for services at St Paul’s, Hereford, Worcester and Ripon Cathedrals.