2012 got off to a great start for me with a concert of music for Epiphany in aid of Fletching Church in West Sussex. A group of fine young professional singers called The Band of Voices was joined by the harpist Tanya Houghton and the trumpeter Charlotte Buchanan in music which included the first public performance of my piece The Shepherds Sing, commissioned in honour of Libby Buchanan. A couple of weeks later I was in Wrocław in Poland where I made a CD of my music with the Wrocław Philharmonic Choir, a choir that I love. We recorded some recent pieces, including The Seeds of Stars, composed for Festival 500 in Newfoundland, The Shepherds Sing, Happy the Man, Furusato, the Japanese folk-song arrangements made for the Kyoto Echo Choir, and Remember Me, a piece written in memory of the 69 young Norwegians who died in the massacre in Utoya Island last July. The CD will be released towards the end of the year.

The first recording of my Requiem will be released on Hyperion Records early in March this year. The performers are Laurie Ashworth, soprano, Andrew Staples, tenor, Wells Cathedral Choir, The Nash Ensemble and Jonathan Vaughn, organ, with conductor Matthew Owens. I went to a couple of the sessions last summer when it was recorded and the choir were on top form. They are quite outstanding. Other music on the CD is Salisbury Motets, Downing Service and three carol settings to poems by Kevin Crossley Holland. There will be a launch concert for the recording in Wells Cathedral on May 5th this year that includes a performance of my Requiem. The work has now been premièred in twelve countries, and there will be a particularly poignant performance in the Kyoto Concert Hall in Japan on March 12 when Keiichi Asai and his Kyoto Echo Choir mark the first anniversary of the devastating earthquake and tsunami of March 2011.