Tag: Andrew Carter

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Andrew Carter, York choir trainer and composer: a tribute by classical music critic and university tutor Martin Dreyer

Andrew Carter RIP

ANDREW Carter, choir trainer and composer, has died at the age of 86.

He was born and grew up in Leicester. He first came to Yorkshire to take a degree in music at the University of Leeds, then put down roots in York when he joined the choir of York Minster as a bass songman (lay clerk).

He also began to teach at the Bar Convent School, where by all accounts he maintained a strict regime and achieved excellent results, particularly with his choirs.

But it was when he founded the Chapter House Choir in December 1965, initially as a one-off venture to raise funds for the Minster, that he began to emerge as a serious choir director. So successful was the first concert that demand quickly mounted, from singers and audience alike, for the choir to continue.

It went on to win several awards, not least in the Let The Peoples Sing choir contest on BBC Radio, and is still a force to be reckoned with, several conductors later, a sure sign of the powerful foundations built by Andrew.

Apart from its regular concert season, the choir became known for its annual Carols By Candlelight, which, despite at times being given on three consecutive nights, was constantly sold out.

Queues for tickets would form outside the Minster at 6a.m. on a Saturday morning in early December, often in the freezing cold. Many of Andrew’s early carol arrangements were made for this event, before beingpublished, first by Banks Music Publications of York and later by Oxford University Press (the latter has published more than 50 of his works, including seven for choir, soloists and orchestra).

These concerts always included several works for handbells, a legacy of his mother’s influence as a handbell ringer herself.

His choral compositions and arrangements grew in popularity to the point where he was only able to fulfil all the commissions he was receiving by devoting himself full time to composition. Choirs in North America were particularly keen to commission and perform new works by Andrew as soon as they were written. He became a regular visitor to the United States as both composer and choir director.

A Maiden Most Gentle, the first of his carols to be sung at King’s College, Cambridge on Christmas Eve, is rightly highly prized. He also wrote two carols including solo soprano lines for Lynne Dawson, an early member of the Chapter House Choir: Spanish Lullaby and Spanish Carol, making use of her linguistic skills. His carols take pride of place in my own collection of Christmas music.

On a more personal level, I enjoyed encountering Andrew at concerts on many occasions, when he was always kindly solicitous of my own and my wife’s good health. Our meetings were full of laughter, with his deep bass chuckle ever infectious. I shall miss him. But his music will certainly live on.

Martin Dreyer

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REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on Chapter House Choirs & Jervaulx Singers, Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York, October 25

Conductor Benjamin Morris

THIS was a strange programme. Ostensibly a celebration of the Chapter House Choir’s upcoming 60th anniversary in December, it somehow morphed into marking the season of remembrance. Celebration and remembrance do not often make easy bedfellows.

Furthermore, the choir’s founder, Andrew Carter – who is also a distinguished choral composer – was in the audience. But he barely got a mention in the programme, was not invited to take a bow and had none of his works performed. Taken together, these were inexcusable omissions.

Judging by the programme, the two conductors involved were much more interested in furthering their own careers than seeing themselves as part of a noble chamber-choir tradition in York, which Chapter House Choir has spearheaded.

The nearest we came to a sense of celebration was in Roderick Williams’s setting of Siegfried Sassoon’s Everyone Sang, given a lusty account by the full forces here: the Chapter House Choir itself, the Chapter House Youth Choir and the octet Jervaulx Singers, making a grand total of nearly 60 singers, with Benjamin Morris conducting.

Otherwise, the mood was restrained, bordering on lugubrious, with mainly slow tempos. The full group opened with Arvo Pärt’s setting of Bogoroditse Djevo (the Russian Orthodox version of the ‘Hail, Mary’) and John Tavener’s take on it. Conducted by Charlie Gower-Smith, it was impressively sung by rote.

 He also directed the Youth Choir in Sullivan’s The Long Day Closes, which was nicely phrased even if its relevance here was doubtful.

The Chapter House Choir alone, under Morris, developed an excellent atmosphere in Elgar’s They Are At Rest, R.I.P. piece if ever there were. Rather less engaging was Owain Park’s Footsteps, which apparently uses texts by no less than nine different authors, but has a restricted harmonic palette that lends it a nebulous feel. It outstayed its welcome.

Jonathan Dove’s Into Thy Hands, sung by the Jervaulx Singers alone, was much more focused as a piece and well modulated.

Howells’ Requiem, a marvellous work, concluded the evening. For all its glories, it seemed out of keeping with the stated headline of celebration. But it was treated with considerable reverence: its smooth, prayerful invocation benefited from beautifully sustained lines.

Psalm 121, with a noble baritone solo, brought hope; sopranos were impassioned, not to say fearless, in the subsequent Requiem before the elegiac composure of the final bars. But let us hope that this is not the final celebration of Chapter House Choir’s anniversary.

Review by Martin Dreyer

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REVIEW: Steve Crowther’s verdict on The Chapter House Choir’s Carols By Candlelight, York Minster, 17/12/2022

The Chapter House Choir

THE Chapter House Choir’s Carols By Candlelight concert was again set in the nave of York Minster, rather than the Chapter House of days past.

The Choir was augmented by the Chapter House Youth Choir – superbly directed by Benjamin Morris and Charlie Gower-Smith respectively – the choir’s Handbell Ringers and York organist William Campbell.

The concert, touchingly dedicated to the memory of Dr Alvan White, the choir’s Candlelighter-in-Chief for these concerts for so many years, opened with Tasmin Jones’s simple but affecting ceremonial procession.

The Choir’s delivery of Gaudete was a dancing delight but Yshani Perinpanayagam’s In Bethlehem Above did suffer slightly with jarring high soprano intonation. William Campbell clearly relished David Willcocks’s Postlude on Mendelssohn and so did we.

The performance of Eric Whitacre’s Lux Aurumque was one of the night’s highlights: beautiful soprano singing, nigh-perfect close-harmony pitching creating a delicate, musical glow.

Cecilia McDowall’s Of A Rose’s use of the Choir’s upper and lower voices came across very effectively, as did the linear singing and moments of rhythmic togetherness. Well written, well performed.

Darius Battiwalla’s Suo Gan was simply lovely, as were the gently falling musical snowflakes of John Hastie’s O Come, O Come Emmanuel for handbells. The Youth Choir’s performance of John Joubert’s ever-infectious Torches was very well judged, even understated, to suit the Minster acoustic and enhance both clarity and enjoyment.

For your reviewer, however, the most rewarding offerings were the two versions of Jesus Christ The Apple Tree: the famous Elizabeth Poston setting and the new one composed this year by the Choir’s founder, Andrew Carter.

Both embraced the freshness, simplicity and fluency of the anonymous 18th-century New England text, both had a sweet, seemingly effortless delivery and both stayed in the memory after the concert itself.

Personally, I prefer the intimacy of the Chapter House itself, but a huge audience seemed perfectly happy here and were richly rewarded by this ever-present Christmas event. An event that continues to embrace a spiritual counterpoint to the season’s materialistic saturation of today. Maybe.

Review by Steve Crowther

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Chapter House Choir to premiere Andrew Carter carol at Saturday’s Carols By Candlelight. Dr Alvan White tribute too

The Chapter House Choir, with director Benjamin Morris in the foreground

CHAPTER House Choir’s Carols By Candlelight concert returns to York Minster on Saturday night.

Directed by Benjamin Morris, the choir will be joined in the nave by the Chapter House Youth Choir, directed by Charlie Gower-Smith, the choir’s Handbell Ringers and York organist William Campbell for a feast of festive music, combining familiar carols with new and exciting compositions.

The 7.30pm programme with no interval includes the premiere of Jesus Christ The Apple Tree, a carol composed specially for the choir this year by distinguished founder Andrew Carter.

Andrew Carter: Premiere of new carol Jesus Christ The Apple Tree

The 90-minute concert will be dedicated to the memory of Dr Alvan White, the choir’s Candlelighter-in-Chief for these concerts from 2003 to 2018. He died in August 2022, having suffered for some years with Lewy body disease.

To mark his long and happy association with the choir, the collection at the end will be in aid of the Lewy Body Society, the British specialist charity that raises awareness and funds research into this poorly understood and often misdiagnosed disease.

Dr White’s daughter, choir member Rachel Hicks, says: “When we needed someone to light the candles for our concerts almost 20 years ago, I knew this would be the perfect job for my Dad.

Dr Alvan White, who died in August, undertaking his Candlelighter-in-Chief duties, a post he held for the Chapter House Choir from 2003 to 2018

“He was a retired chemistry lecturer, who had learned the skill of glassblowing to mend lab equipment, so my childhood memories of visiting him at work were of him working with fire!

“Who better to come to the Minster and light hundreds of candles for our concerts? Dad loved classical music, so this was an ideal combination. As a family, we are honoured that his contribution to the life of the choir is being recognised in this way and that we can support further research into what we know, first-hand, to be a challenging and complex condition.”

Jacqueline Cannon, the Lewy Body Society’s chief executive, adds: “We are very grateful to the Chapter House Choir for the opportunity to raise awareness of Lewy body dementia. There are around 130,000 people living with the disease in the UK, yet it is often described as the most common disease you’ve never heard of.

Donations at the Chapter House Choir’s Carols by Candlelight concert will be given to the Lewy Body Society, in memory of the late Dr Alvan White

“Through our research programme, we support studies that help us to better understand, diagnose and treat the disease, and to date we have funded more than £2 million in grants. The donations made at the concert will help us to continue this work, as well as providing specialist information and support to families, like Alvan’s, who are affected by the disease.”

Tickets are available at: yorkminster.org/whats-on/event/chapter-house-choir-carols-by-candlelight. Doors open at 6.45pm.

Did you know?

The Chapter House Choir first performed Carols by Candlelight in York Minster in 1965, when the choir was formed to raise funds for the York Minster Appeal.

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REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on Carols By Candlelight, Chapter House Choir, York Minster, December 15

Chapter House Choir musical director Benjamin Morris

WITHDRAWAL symptoms were widespread last year when Carols By Candlelight succumbed to Covid. For it has become a tradition without which no York Yuletide is complete.

This year it was back with a vengeance, transplanted from the Chapter House to the Nave of the Minster to allow a larger audience. Even if the candles did not flicker quite so intimately, the move was a resounding success: the building’s wide-open spaces were encouraged to co-operate.

Musical director Benjamin Morris had chosen a typically eclectic programme. Admirably, more than half of the 18 choral pieces were either composed or arranged by living musicians. In addition to the main choir, we enjoyed the Chapter House Youth Choir, conducted by Charlie Gowers-Smith, the traditional Handbell Ringers and three organ interludes from Asher Oliver.

The combined choirs opened with Andrew Carter’s tasteful arrangement of the Advent plainsong hymn, Veni Emmanuel, sung in procession. The Advent responsory that followed featured a beautifully crystalline soprano soloist (unnamed). Muscular contrasts came with Joubert’s Torches and in the crisp syncopation of Matthias’s arrangement of Sir Christèmas, the oldest carol here and reaching back to the 15th century.

At the other end of the spectrum, we had Master of the Queen’s Music Judith Weir’s setting of William Blake’s My Guardian Angel, with its cleverly repeating Alleluia, sung by the combined choirs. Even more atmospheric was Holst’s In The Bleak Midwinter, with the alternating choirs widely spaced. The sweet harmonies of Sally Beamish’s In The Stillness stood up well alongside Warlock’s tasty Bethlehem Down.

The choir’s final group was the best of all. After tenderly caressing The Shepherds’ Farewell, from Berlioz’s ‘L’enfance du Christ’, there was a lovely calm in Nicola LeFanu’s Saint Ita’s Lullaby and much feeling in Rutter’s melodious Candlelight Carol. We finished as we began, with founder-director Andrew Carter’s Make We Merry, spirited and heart-warming.

Along the way, the Handbell Ringers brought their mystifying skills to bear on four numbers, with Carter’s arrangement of Good King Wenceslas and John Hastie’s of We Wish You A Merry Christmas drawing especially warm applause.

The Youth Choir launched into the Vaughan Williams arrangement of the Yorkshire Wassail with special vigour. Oliver’s three contributions were gracefully restrained – we might have had a little more in the way of fireworks – although he had to do battle with a reed stop on the newly-restored organ speaking rather less than cleanly.

At ten minutes less than two hours despite no interval, the concert might have been a touch shorter for audience comfort in the chill, but it was wonderfully energising to have this great tradition back where it belonged.

Review by Martin Dreyer

Next performance by Chapter House Choir: Festival of Carols, St Michael-le-Belfrey, York, December 18, 7.30pm.