In 2019 the Chorus recorded John Rutter’s Gloria with Black Dyke Band – and the CD on which it is features reached the Number One spot in the Classic FM Specialist Classical Albums charts in October 2020, only two weeks after it’s release by Naxos.
The CD Anthems, Hymns and Gloria for Brass Band , was recorded in St Oswald’s Church on Bannerdale Road in Sheffield. Directed by Professor Nicholas Childs and Chorus Music Director Darius Battiwalla, the CD was featured as Album of the Week on the Classic FM radio station, and rapidly moved up the chart over the following week.
The CD features eleven tracks composed by Rutter and arranged for brass band by Belgian conductor Luc Vertommen. It includes many of the English choral composer’s most famous works, including the Pie Jesu from his 1985 Requiem, and This is the Day composed for the wedding of HRH Prince William and Kate Middleton in 2011.
John Rutter’s Gloria was composed in 1974 for choir, brass, percussion and organ, with an alternative version for choir and orchestra. Described as “exalted, devotional and jubilant”, it was Rutter’s first commission from the US. Structured in three movements and based on the Gloria from the Latin mass, it was always intended as a concert piece.
In June 2020, during the coronavirus lock-down, our Music Director Darius Battiwalla produced brass arrangements of some movements from Handel’s Messiah that hadn’t up to then been arranged for brass band accompaniment. He did this in preparation for our performance of Messiah with the world-famous Black Dyke Band, originally scheduled for 2020 but which had to be postponed until April 2022.
Listen to one of the movements, the lovely soprano aria ‘How Beautiful Are the Feet’, sung by Yorkshire-born soprano Catrin Pryce-Jones accompanied by the Black Dyke Band.
Catrin Pryce-Jones
Yorkshire born Soprano Catrin Pryce-Jones studied music at the Royal Academy of Music, Chethams School of Music and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
Catrin has been soprano soloist with many choral societies including the Edinburgh Choral Union, Oxford Harmonic Choir, Brighton Orpheus Choir, Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus and the Halifax Choral Society, singing solo soprano in numerous oratorios including the Fauré Requiem, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, the Vivaldi Gloria, Bach’s St John Passion, Mozart’s Requiem, Haydn’s Creation and of course Handel’s Messiah.
