Quintessential Voices

On Tuesday we went to a private performance by Quintessential Voices, a  vocal group based around lay clerks from Windsor and from Westminster Cathedral. The 5 man group (Stephen Burrows, Ben Alden, Jonathan Bungard, Jon Saunders, Will Gaunt) performed their programme The Little Road to Bethlehem which mixes readings and music to tell the Christmas story. Apart from a poem by Rudyard Kipling (Eddi's service), the readings were all traditionally biblical, but in terms of music they managed to include a whole variety ranging from Perotin's Beata Viscera to Sally Beamish's In the stillness, taking in Guerrero, Victoria, Praetorius, Michael Head and Richard Rodney Bennett along the way.

They have recorded the programme which has been issued as their first disc, further details here.