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I've returned to writing motets for my Tempus per Annum cycle for the church's year. I am way behind with these, but I enjoy returning to them and find writing the motets rather therapeutic. Perhaps they are a little like writing string quartets. Anyway, you have to find endless variations on the same themes to keep variety and I enjoy being inventive. In quick succession I have done the Latin version of the Maundy Thursday motet and produced both the Latin and English versions of the Good Friday motet (quite speed record). I am now about to embark on the motet for the Easter Saturday evening mass (in fact the Easter Sunday vigil mass). The first motet in this sequence of Lent and Passiontide motets which is actually joyful (it starts with the words Jubilate Deo).

One of the reasons for choosing the 4 Advent motets for performance in the Cranmer concert in July 2005 (to be repeated in Oxford in March 2006) was that the 4 motets form a neat group and are quite varied in their texts.

I am now starting the publicity machine for the March concerts (the Eight:Fifteen Vocal Ensemble doing their Cranmer concert in Oxford and the Salomon Orchestra, under Adrian Brown, doing a concert in St. James's Church, Piccadilly). This means producing leaflets, posters, press releases etc. The press release for Oxford goes out next week and I am currently working on the leaflets so they can go to the ticket agency we're using in Oxford (Tickets Oxford). The London concert is just using an on-line ticket agency (TicketWeb) so all I have had to supply them with is electronic marketing information, the leaflets can wait until I need to put them in the venue, which is a relief.