Sanctifica Nos: Works for Choir, Organ and Viol Consort by Joanna Marsh The Choir of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, Fretwork, Martin Baker, Andrew Arthur, David Skinner

• Joanna Marsh (b. 1970):
• 1 Marsh: Martha and Mary 08:05
• 2 Marsh: Missa Brevis "Christina of Markyate": I. Kyrie 02:22
• 3 Marsh: Missa Brevis "Christina of Markyate": II. Gloria 04:20
• 4 Marsh: Missa Brevis "Christina of Markyate": III. Sanctus 01:41
• 5 Marsh: Missa Brevis "Christina of Markyate": IV. Benedictus 01:42
• 6 Marsh: Missa Brevis "Christina of Markyate": V. Agnus Dei 01:55
• 7 Marsh: Evening Canticles (St Paul's Service): I. Magnificat 05:43
• 8 Marsh: Evening Canticles (St Paul's Service): II. Nunc dimittis 03:30
• 9 Marsh: Ottomania 07:45
• 10 Marsh: Thou Has Searched Me And Known Me 03:32
• 11 Marsh: Sanctifica nos 06:35
• 12 Marsh: Mensch, willst du leben seliglich 02:29
• 13 Marsh: Evergreen 04:48
• 14 Marsh: O magnum mysterium 04:02
• Total Runtime 58:29

Info for Sanctifica Nos: Works for Choir, Organ and Viol Consort by Joanna Marsh

Dubai-based British composer Joanna Marsh has a growing international reputation for new works across many genres. Here, the choir of her alma mater, Sidney Sussex College, with their director David Skinner celebrate her recent position as composer-in-residence of the college with this new album of choral and instrumental works, including a number of premiere recordings.

The choir present a major work written specially for the choir, Sanctifica nos, while Martha and Mary and The St Paul's Service see the choir collaborate with viol consort Fretwork. Fretwork are also joined by organist Martin Baker for Ottomania, composed specially for this recording.

The Choir of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge
Fretwork
Martin Baker, organ
Andrew Arthur, conductor (Ottomania)
David Skinner, conductor

David Skinner
divides his time between choral directing, teaching and research, and is Osborn Director of Music at Sidney Sussex College. He cofounded The Cardinall’s Musick in 1989, and has also worked with many other leading early music groups in the UK including The Tallis Scholars, The Sixteen and the King ’s Singers. David’s multi-awardwinning professional ensemble, Alamire (www.alamire.co.uk), was founded in 2005 as an extension to his research and performance activities.

An engaging presenter, David has appeared in and writ ten a variety of shows on BBC Radios 3 and 4, and acted as music advisor for the Music and Monarchy series on BBC 2 with historian David Starkey. He has published widely on music and musicians of early Tudor England and has produced a number of critically acclaimed performing editions. The Choir’s repertoire is shaped to a degree by David's academic in terests, and the weekly Latin Vespers service (unique among Oxbridge choirs) often show cases e xciting recent rediscoveries of early music.

David’s 2015 edition of The Tallis Psalter was dedicated to the Choir, while he most recently curated a volume of essays on Tallis’s life and music for the journal Early Music (OUP). Current projects include an edition of Tallis’s early Latin works for Early English Church Music (Stainer & Bell), and an historical introduction to a facsimile of MS 1070 (Anne Boleyn’s Songbook) in the Royal College of Music, London.

Andrew Arthur
enjoys a busy and varied freelance career that has seen him perform extensively throughout the United Kingdom and on tour across Europe, South Africa, Canada and the USA. Best-known for his work in the field of historically informed performance, he is in great demand as a director, soloist, accompanist and continuo player, working with many of the UK’s leading period-instrument orchestras and professional choirs. Andrew’s concerto, recital and chamber- music engagements encompass organ, harpsichord and fortepiano literature and his multifarious CD recordings as both keyboard-player and conductor have been met with wide critical acclaim.

Andrew continues to hold long-term positions as Associate Director of The Hanover Band and as a Director and Principal Keyboardist at the Carmel Bach Festival in California where he and Peter Hanson perform together regularly as a duo partnership and within numerous instrumental ensembles. Andrew is also Musical Director of his own period- instrument ensemble and vocal consort, Orpheus Britannicus, with whom he records for Resonus Classics; in 2019, the ensemble was nominated for an International Classical Music Award.

Alongside his performing activities, Andrew is Fellow, Director of Music and Director of Studies in Music at Trinity Hall, Cambridge where, in addition to his College responsibilities, he is also an Affiliated Lecturer in the University’s Faculty of Music, Coordinator of the University’s Organ Scholarship Scheme and Chairman of the University’s Organ Scholars’ Forum. Amongst his diverse portfolio of musical activities in Cambridge, he works throughout the academic year training the Organ Scholars and conducting the Chapel Choir at Trinity Hall with whom, in addition to their regular schedule of services in the College Chapel, he undertakes a number of concerts, recordings and foreign tours.

Sidney Sussex College
rose from the ruins of the Cambridge Greyfriars in 1596 and has long been a nest for professional musicians. Indeed, the large chapel that stood on this site in pre-Reformation times was the regular venue for University ceremonies and was where a number of early English composers took their degrees, including Robert Fayrfax (MusB, 1501; DMus 1504) and Christopher Tye (MusB, 1536). Later, the great Elizabethan composer William Byrd would have been well-known to the foundress, Lady Frances Sidney, and two very fine elegies by Byrd survive for her nephew, the poet and courtier Sir Philip Sidney.

It is thought that a dedicated chapel choir must have existed in some form since the foundation of the College on St Valentine’s Day 1596. Since the admission of women to the college in 1976, the Choir of Sidney Sussex has blossomed into one of the most esteemed choral groups in Oxbridge. In 2009, the American composer Eric Whitacre was appointed as Sidney Sussex’s first Composer in Residence; in 2015, that mantle was assumed by British composer and Choir alumnus Joanna Marsh.

Aside from the abundant contribution the Choir makes to the musical life of the College, Sidney is home to a wealth of musical ensembles and choral groups, and Fellows with both academic and practical expertise. The College boasts an active Music Society which organises weekly chamber recitals with guest appearances. Small-scale operas and musicals are often staged in the Master’s Garden in Easter Term. Currently resident in the College are Dr Christopher Page (1991), founder and former director of the multi-award-winning Gothic Voices, and Dr David Skinner (2006).

Fretwork
In 2021 Fretwork celebrates 35 years of performing music old and new, and they look forward to a challenging and exciting future as the world’s leading consort of viols. Fretwork have expanded their repertory to include music from over 500 years, from the first printed consort music in Venice in 1501 to music written this year. And, in between, everything that can be played on a consort of viols – Byrd and Schubert, Purcell and Shostakovitch, Gibbons and Britten, Dowland and Grieg.

This great musical adventure has taken them all over the globe, from Russia to Japan to North America to Australia. Audiences have responded enthusiastically to the extraordinary sound world that Fretwork create and to the consistently high standards that they achieve. The future sees many exciting projects based on the thrilling juxtaposition of old and new; making the experience of old music new and bringing the sensibilities of past ages to bear on contemporary music.

Booklet for Sanctifica Nos: Works for Choir, Organ and Viol Consort by Joanna Marsh