Given the, as ever, huge amount of detail in the new BBC Proms prospectus, I'll helpfully point out that my chorus and orchestra piece Moon and Star (1995) is going to be performed in a Prom on 29th July; a particularly interesting one, I would say, which will include a major new piece by Brett Dean sung by Claire Booth. It will also be televised (BBC Scottish/BBC Singers/Ryan Wigglesworth.) The BBC invited me to "put this news on your socials" and "add your own music to ou

It's about three years ago since I received the surprising invitation to write a substantial new work for the choir school of Notre-Dame Cathedral (La Maîtrise Notre-Dame de Paris); a setting of the entire Mass text, together with the two extra Motets that would complete a full Mass Service. Rather incredibly, the far-off, mysterious premiere of that new Mass is now "bearing down like an express train" (although I'm sure it won't be that bad) and takes place in the Cathedra

It was a great choral honour to find out (as usual, by accident) that Peter Phillips was going to include my setting of a Marian antiphon, Ave Regina Caelorum, in a Tallis Scholars evening centred round a Mass by Tomas Luis de Victoria. If I have ever written a Victoria-like piece (in my imagination, dark, impassioned, Spanish) this is it. I have listened many times to recordings by this legendary group, but I don't think I've ever been to one of their concerts before. It