When I last sang with Lyra Davidica, Princess Diana was alive and Sri Lanka were scoring 952/6 against India (I recall someone bursting into breakfast on that choir tour brandishing a newspaper: ‘Just LOOK at THIS!!’). In the meantime I faded from the memories of most people associated with the choir, but I remained on the email list and was able to join a choir weekend at St Alban’s at the end of May. (St. Alban’s Abbey/Cathedral is beginning to feel like a home from home; this is the third time I have sung there in 18 months, with 3 different choirs. In fact I was also invited to sing there on the previous Monday, with yet another choir, but was doing the B minor mass instead.)
The music for the evensong and Eucharist that we sang was well-known to me, with the exception of Brian Moles’ setting of ‘At the round earth’s imagined corners’ which I believe the choir premiered recently. The Cathedral is in a certain amount of disarray at the moment as the organ is being rebuilt and there is scaffolding in the nave which reduces the acoustic; but I can see why they might want to do these two pieces of work at the same time.