Kildare Cathedral Choir

Derek Verso, Director of Music, St Brigid's Cathedral, Kildare

Recently I took up the position of director of St Brigid's Cathedral Choir, and since last September am enjoying enormously working with this highly-committed group of people.

What makes them different?

Well for a start this cathedral choir sings only four or five services per year, all of which are in the afternoon or evening For the rest of the year there is a regular Sunday organist and a few people who sing in the choir stalls.

Who is in the cathedral choir?

There are approximately 26 singers at present — five basses, four tenors, five altos and twelve sopranos, and they all sing in other choirs throughout the surrounding counties. Some live close by but most travel a fair deal to attend (two people travel 35 miles). Another unique aspect is the choir is drawn from all the Christian churches — so a truly ecumenical spirit prevails and infuses our work together.

How does this work?

The idea is that they come together to sing at the major church festivals in the cathedral and that their participation in St Brigid's Cathedral does not interfere with their other choral commitments.

So in practice they come together for three or four rehearsals before Christmas, Easter, Confirmation etc., etc. I have been very impressed by their hard working and committed approach; this is no easy sing through a few hymns and a psalm, a chat and a cuppa, no, this is two hours of intensive singing and learning of new music, where everyone is anxious to do his or her best, in a church hall type situation with a simple keyboard.

This choir learns more in four rehearsals than the average choir learns in a year! They just drink up new challenges so it's a great pleasure (though there’s a lot of preparation) to work with them.

What happens at a service?

Well in fact, usually two hours before a service, they are all there, going through the final and only rehearsal they will have with the organ in the cathedral. I am free to conduct as we always engage an organist — usually the talented Dr Kerry Houston — and that ensures everything runs smoothly. Then the choir robe and gather at the west end of the cathedral and soon the service starts, and we all process up the aisle and off we go.

In brief, the attraction for the singers is that they get to sing in a cathedral environment with a wonderful acoustic, which makes music a central platform to its worship. We try to practise the best traditions of cathedral worship in what we do, and how we do it and this cathedral choir offers the only opportunity in the Diocese for singers to work in this way, and they really enjoy the challenge this offers. From the cathedral's point of view, it has its own really good choir for the major festivals of the year, which is quite independent of the more usual "parish type" music for the rest of the year.

Does it work?

Yes, extremely well. Having just finished my third service with them, I am impressed at how well it works and how much it is appreciated by the capacity congregation each time. We recently did a Songs of Praise for Ascension, and as the choir left the choir stalls at the end of the service to process back to the west end of the cathedral, the congregation began to applaud spontaneously together. This has never happened before. What appreciation.

What do we sing?

Well we sing a broad range of music — from Tallis to Bruckner, Matthias, Rutter, Ó Riada, Stanford and at the Songs of Praise we had four instrumentalists (age 16 to 30 something!) and they lead the choir/congregation in three contemporary songs by Graham Kendrick and others). This was another first for the cathedral!

Is that it?

No, we've been invited to sing in St Fin Barre's Cathedral Cork for a Sunday in August and we have just started to record our first CD, due out hopefully in time for St Brigid's Day next year.

Perhaps this is a model that could be copied in other dioceses where a good cathedral choir for 52 weeks of the year is just not possible any longer.

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