The year finishes with a selection of performances around the country, beginning with another performance of The World on Fire (2015) by the Durham University Chamber Choir (05/12). The Cantus Singers of Cambridge perform Alma Redemptoris Mater (2020) on the 13th in Newnham and there are also performances of the Matins Responsory (2013) and God Be in My Head (2025). The month finishes with a trio of perfromances of I sing of a maiden (2016) by The Sixteen at Cadogan Hall and Trinity College, Cambridge (17-19/12), the first of which will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on the 23rd. 

In Autumn 2015, I was very lucky to have three new works premiered across the country, for three different groups for three very different occasions. The first was on the 22 October where a community choir of local singers gave the first performance of my ‘fantasy’ for choir and tubular bells, By Reason of Darkness in the fading light and seagull calls of King’s College Quad to open that year’s SOUND festival. The second (on the 21 November) was my oratorio, Noah’s Fire for baritone, choir, children’s voices and orchestra written for the 70th anniversary of the Chester Music Society and performed to a full house (and terrified composer) in the city’s Cathedral. The final piece was the shortest, most conventional and least taxing to compose, The World on Fire, a four-minute work for The Choir of the Queen’s College, Oxford, for a forthcoming CD release. It will maybe come as no surprise that two of these works have yet to have a second performance (though I’m always hopeful), but one of them has had over fifty performances and continues to be my most performed and most well-travelled composition. That piece is, of course, The World on Fire.

It is promising to be an exciting Autumn with many performances taking place on both sides of the Atlantic. Concerts include the Levens Choir touring the Three Partsongs (2012) around Dorset, performances of The World on Fire (2015) in Ipswich and Moscow (Idaho, not Russia), and a fantastic programme in Guildford that includes Ave Maria, mater Dei (2017) and a rare performance of The Hazel Wood (2012) with Onyx Brass. There are premieres of my new Prelude & Galliard (2025) in Harvard and a new Advent piece Awake Out of Sleep (2025) in Cambridge. Perhaps the highlight is the 01 November where I will be in Canada for the first performance of Missa Omnium Sanctorum (2025) written for the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Toronto Oratory.

Over the past two years I’ve gradually been ‘revising’ (I’ll unpack that word shortly) my whole catalogue of works, something that began with looking at the odd piece occasionally when I wasn’t busy with other projects and then accelerated to a fully blown appraisal of my work this summer. Much of this was spurred on by a request from the British Library for my scores to be in their collection and this turned what had been a piecemeal approach into something more concerted and wide-ranging. The thought of one’s works being in a repository for the rest of time really concentrates the mind in terms of how and what you want to be represented, especially when you might have shuffled off this mortal coil…

It was really nice to be asked to submit all of my scores to the British Library recently in recognition that self-published music now plays a substantial part in music-making in the United Kingdom. In total, 102 pieces were sent along, from the earliest, the Four Tonal Songs from 1996 to recent pieces such as God Be in My Head and the Fifth Service from this year. Its been fasciating cataloguing, revisiting and revising works (as well as withdrawing a few…) and I’ll write a blog about this soon going into the process in more detail.

It’s been a busy summer of performances of recent works that began with the premiere of the Fifth Service (Carlisle Cathedral) (2025) in June as well as the UK premiere of Lumen in Umbra (2024) and the English premiere of God Be in My Head (2025) in the same month. There were also performances of older pieces as well, with a lovely performance of Invocation (2010) and two performances of Three Partsongs (2012) in London and Cumbria respectively. The autumn will mainly be about recordings, with The Shadow Calls (2022), God Be in My Head, Everyone Sang (2023) and The Glory of Zion (2010) all being released in the coming months. And of course, the recording of my complete organ works as well!