Between now and 2014, expect to have many more opportunities to hear the latest choral work from the composer and librettist team of Tom Cunningham and Derek Roberts.
Following on from previous National Youth Choir of Scotland commissions Saga of the Seven Days and Seven Planets and a Cosmic Rock, Going for Gold: A Sports Cantata is a melodic seven-movement suite for young voices that celebrates sporting aspiration, both in general (No Pain, No Gain) and by discipline (Track and Field, Aquatics and so on).
This premiere featured all possible combinations of the National Boys Choir, its Junior Corps and the older chaps of the Changed Voices section; 163 lads in all. NYCoS director Christopher Bell is planning to have 1000 young people sing it in the year of the Commonwealth Games, by which time we shall all be humming its catchy tunes.
As is the way of this Easter showcase, that was but a (substantial) fraction of the music the boys had mastered over the previous week. There was also a first outing of a new piece by Royal Wedding composer Paul Mealor, I am the gentle light, which is destined for a televised Song of Praise performance by the boys next month – to my hears outshone by the two laddish songs, also from the NYCoS songbook, from a more senior Aberdeen-domiciled Welshman, John Hearne.
The riches of this organisation's repertoire are many, and they also included a fine set of sea shanties for the Changed Voices from the always-excellent Sheena Phillips, a new Bell discovery in American composer Mary Lynn Lightfoot, and the very clever mix of Morse and musical notation in Rebecca Lawrence's Rhythm in Code.
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