A carefully curated programme rather than a disc to dip into: Christopher Gray on his first disc with the Choir of St John's College, Cambridge

Christopher Gray (Photo: Richard Marsham)

Christopher Gray has been director of music at St John's College, Cambridge since 2023. He was formerly director of music at Truro Cathedral and took over at St John's from Andrew Nethsingha (now at Westminster Abbey). During May 2025, Christopher's first recording with the choir is released on the St John's Cambridge label (in conjunction with Signum Classics); Lamentation & Liberation features the premiere recording of Joanna Marsh’s triptych Echoes in Time, Gray’s first commission for the Choir – setting poetry by Malcolm Guite. Two other recent commissions for the Choir feature on the recording, Helena Paish’s The Annunciation and Martin Baker's organ prelude Ecce ego Ioannes, alongside Sir James MacMillan’s Cantos Sagrados and works by Roxanna Panufnik and Dobrinka Tabakova.

Contemporary music has played a significant role at St John's over the last few years whilst Christopher has done quite a bit at Truro Cathedral including releasing albums of music by Dobrinka Tabakova and Gabriel Jackson. Christopher wanted to continue this, yet felt the new album should be seen as a whole, rather than simply individual tracks. He had not collaborated with Joanna Marsh before and her new triptych consists of three pieces, commissioned for key dates in the liturgical calendar - The Hidden Light was premiered at the Choir’s Advent Carol Service in 2023, Refugee for the Epiphany Carol Service, and final movement Still to Dust for the Lent Meditation service.

For Joanna Marsh's triptych, she worked with two of Malcolm Guite's existing poems and they commissioned a third poem. The idea was to take the Biblical narrative of Advent, Epiphany and Ash Wednesday and find resonance in the world of 2025, tying the Biblical story to today because of the associations Guite makes. Seeing the Holy Family as refugees from Herod as dictator provides a lot of resonance with contemporary situations. [see my interview with Joanna Marsh at the time of the premiere of The Hidden Light]

Christopher Gray & the Choir of St John's College, Cambridge (Photo: Keith Heppell)

The three movements of Joanna Marsh's triptych are balanced by the three movements of James MacMillan's powerful Cantos Sagrados, which sets poems by Ariel Dorfman and Ana Maria Mendoza about political repression in Latin America alongside traditional religious Latin texts. James MacMillan's work was premiered in 1990 and Christopher had been keen for the disc not to be entirely about new music. Christopher first got to know James MacMillan's piece because it was one of the first recordings he bought as a teenager. They did the first movement in Truro, but performing the whole work at St John's was a big undertaking that took an academic year. Doing seven services a week means you can gently build music into the choir's blood, and they really live with pieces and get to know them deeply.

Christopher had worked with Dobrinka Tabakova before, and her Turn our Captivity, O Lord said exactly what he wanted to say at the end of the album, ending on a reassuring note. This balances the opening, where Roxanna Panufnik's Deus, Deus meus (taken from her Westminster Mass) moves from a single voice to grittier writing. This was a work that the choir already knew, and it opens the disc with the idea of searching for God, longing for God.

Helena Paish was a chorister at Truro Cathedral and she won the BBC Proms Inspire competition whilst she was a Truro. St John's often supports emerging musicians so Christopher was pleased to be able to commission The Annunciation from her. In the work, she writes for the choir rather differently than the other pieces on the disc dividing the basses into six and the tenors into four, adding two alto solos. This use of a heavily divided choir is not something they do a lot but here Christopher thinks it is very effective.

Martin Baker, the former director of music at Westminster Cathedral, teaches improvisation to the college organ scholars Christopher is a great admirer of Martin Baker's work at Westminster, and Christopher felt that he was ideal to write the organ piece giving his imagination and improvisation.

The Choir of St John's College, Cambridge recording on 17 July 2024 (Photo: Isabelle Freeman)

Christopher hopes people will find the disc a movement journey, a carefully curated programme rather than a disc to dip into. Sometimes, in music as in life, you have to go through challenges, and listening to the disc there is comfort too.

When I ask what he is considering for future recordings, Christopher comments that this is a big question for any group. When he was growing up, few choirs were issuing CDs though St John's College was one of them. Now, most of the repertoire has been covered and whilst there are nice pieces that are interesting, there can be reasons why these works have not been recorded. Though it is interesting to cast light on unusual corners of the repertoire, but research is needed, and you can bring in personal interest to, reflecting the history and legacy of the college and the choir, as well as supporting new composers.

But Christopher feels that there is something also about keeping familiar pieces fresh for each generation. He points out that Christmas albums can often get buried and that there is more of a cast to be made for reviving familiar pieces at Christmas. To this end, the choir's next album will be a Christmas one. There will be new material but the album will mostly be simply an enjoyable Christmas album. The repertoire will feature Poulenc's Xmas motets along with Howell's Three Carol Anthems (Howells having been music director of the Choir in the 1940s). He is planning an enjoyable disc with no agenda.

Christopher Gray & the Choir of St John's College, Cambridge (Photo: Keith Heppell)

Moving from cathedral to college has meant a change of rhythm for Christopher. At the great seasons of Christmas and Easter, whereas the cathedral choir is furiously busy there are no services at college because there are no students. This year, for instance instead of Holy Week services, Christopher and the choir were in the USA on tour. He feels that it is good for the choir to take two programmes around to multiple venues. In December there will be an English tour and then the choir members go home. It is a very different rhythm, with St John's biggest service of the year being the Advent Carol Service.

There is also a difference in personnel between college and cathedral. At the college, the entire back row (altos, tenors and basses) turns over every three years. This means that when new students join them in September, there is a real rush to get them up to speed, particularly for the Advent Carol Service which is broadcast. But Christopher points out that young singers are at the stage in their lives when they want to learn, there is a culture of learning, but the trajectory that they go in is indeed steep.

Andrew Nethsingha left a well-stewarded set-up in the choir, and Christopher came to St John's because of both the choir's sound and its setup. But that said, he feels that you cannot stand still. They have introduced a choral graduate programme where those who have graduated can spend a year in the choir. During Andrew Nethsingha's time, girls were introduced into the choir for the first time. At Truro, they introduced girls but had girls from the age of 13 to 18, whereas the boys are younger. At St John's both the girls and the boys are in the 8 to 13 age group, 50/50 and Christopher feels that it is working well. Musically, he admits that the choir is not identical but the sound is still pretty close and he feels that it is a difference that is to be celebrated rather than feeling that things are worse than before. And it feels like the choir family is properly complete, especially as they have women in the back row too. But he hopes that people recognise the musicianship of the choir, and its heart-on-sleeve approach, anchoring everything in the text. And he feels that vocal colouring is in their DNA.

They are continuing the choir's pioneering work with contemporary composers and Errollyn Wallen will be writing something for them for December, and there are other interesting collaborations coming up. A mixture of the fresh and the different with the standard. When we spoke, the choir had a Bach cantata coming up in six weeks along with a joint concert with the Gesualdo Six.

Lament & Liberation
Choir of St John's College, Cambridge
Alexander Robson (Herbert Howells Organ Scholar)
Christopher Gray (director)

SIGCD893
St John’s Cambridge imprint on Signum Records.

• Roxanna Panufnik - Westminster Mass: III. Deus, Deus meus
• Joanna Marsh - Echoes in Time
•    I. The Hidden Light
•    II. Refugee
•    III. Still to Dust
• Helena Paish - The Annunciation
• Martin Baker - Ecce ego Ioannes
• James MacMillan - Cantos Sagrados
• I. Identity
• II. Virgin of Guadalupe
• III. Sun Stone
• Dobrinka Tabakova - Turn our captivity, O Lord

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