The Waiting Sky

On November 8th 2024, Anna Lapwood releases her new album ‘The Waiting Sky’, along with the Pembroke College Girls’ Choir. She says:

“One of the things I love most about working with the Girl Choristers at Pembroke is that they are constantly surprising me with what we’re capable of, always encouraging me to keep pushingthem further. I remember when the choir first started, most of our repertoire was in 2 parts – very occasionally we would break into 3 parts, but those pieces were always seen as real challenges at the time. A couple of years later we had started singing music in 4 parts, and had settled into a nice routine of regular repertoire. One of the older girls then came to me and said she would really appreciate it if they could add a whole load of completely new music to our repertoire - music that stretched them further. I spent a couple of days diving into as much upper voices repertoire as I could, and tentatively started working with them on some more complex pieces, which they just ate up! Singing in 6-8 parts has become one of our favourite things; we stand in a circle, I sing with them instead of conducting, and we make music together. Initially I was worried the younger choristers would struggle to keep up, but I’ve found time and time again they have simply risen to the challenge.

The music on this recording traces this journey, ranging from Owain Park’s simple but beautiful ‘Cradle Lullaby’ through to Kerensa Briggs 7 part ‘Seek ye, first, the kingdom of God’. Nadezhda Averina’s arrangement of Rheinberger’s ‘Abendlied’ allows them to experience one of the great staples of the choral repertoire, while James McCarthy’s ‘Peaceful was the night’ provides an opportunity to delve into musical storytelling.

Winter Time & The Waiting Sky were both written by the girl choristers; we have a tradition where the last rehearsal of each term is spent composing a new piece as a group which we then sing to
the parents. Winter Time was written a couple of years ago; whenever a chorister sang a solo it was because that was a bit they had written, and it was lovely to give those choristers the chance to record these solos for this EP. The Waiting Sky was written over the course of two rehearsals last year. They had just heard the Chapel Choir sing Roderick Williams’ setting of ‘O Adonai’, and it clearly made an impact on them as they drew on many of the features of Roderick’s music in their own writing, from the quasi-improvisational imitative writing to the melodic fragment sung by the angels. In this case, it was two of our youngest choristers who were so drawn to the melodic fragment, so they sang these as little solos representing ‘the shining star’.

There have been so many points over the past couple of years where the choristers and I have been chatting and one of them will say ‘can you imagine us doing this 4 years ago’?! I think this EP is all about capturing that sense of achievement, progression, and joy that comes from making music together as a group, growing together and constantly breaking through our own perceptions of what we can achieve.”