Singing in Memory

Bath Abbey Choir Record CD in Memory of Those Lost in Pandemic.

By Katy Hill

The world-renowned Bath Abbey choir can often be heard singing within the Bath Abbey’s historic walls every week, during their live performances. Despite a dedication to the people and visitors of Bath city, the choir have performed in a range of other cathedrals, such as Exeter and Canterbury. Additionally, the choir have performed worldwide, singing in France, Germany and the Netherlands and now potentially in your own living room.

Set on producing a CD in memory of those lost within the Pandemic, the choir have been working tirelessly at recording and are set to finish by “Autumn 2022” according to Bath Abbey’s director of music, Huw Williams. Currently titled ‘memoriam’ Huw Williams explains that the CD will be “in memory of those who died in the pandemic as well as capturing the wider grief” caused by Covid-19, claiming that the CD will “combine the sense of loss and the sense of comfort in a disk”.

The collection of music will feature the boys and girls choir as well as the lay clerks, and will be conducted by Huw Williams. They will be singing a variety of hymns from ‘Sacred Grace’ to music by Williams’s himself with ‘Lord you have been our dwelling place’. Huw Williams described the disks contents as having “New Testament, Old Testament and new music all together”.

The music director explained how the choir has “worked hard” on the recordings but that it has also been “a lot of fun” to produce and for those in the choir, they will leave the experience with a “professional recording” whilst giving people “comfort joy and strength”.

The Bath Abbey is one of Bath’s most popular attractions, Williams explained that the “people who come to Abbey, come for the architecture and the music.” And now they are bringing the music to them.