Following the recording in June 2009, we have just released the new CD of Prior Park College’s Chapel Choir entitled “Laudate”. The CD was recorded over 3 nights with quite a grueling schedule of between 3 and 4 hours each night with only short breaks. Given this, the chapel choir performed remarkably and the end result is something for everyone to be proud of.
Proir Park College is a co-educational Catholic day and boarding school occupying a magnificent Georgian mansion in Bath. The choir has an outstanding reputation for excellence and has performed in a number of English cathedrals as well as throughout Europe.
Copies of the CD are available from Roland Robertson, Music Department, Prior Park College, Ralph Allen Drive, Bath, BA2 5AH or telephone 01225 835353.
Our final recording session at Prior Park last night went extremely well and was very productive. Highlights of the session included Weelkes Hosannah to the Son of David, Eric Whitacre’s Lux Aeternae and Tallis’s Salvator Mundi.
The session over ran slightly as we had a few recordings of people dropping pencils and banging doors which weren’t on the schedule but it has to be said, Dave and Andrew Sackett who were producing the recording for Prior Park did a great job of keeping the session under control and on time. The next stage is to go through all the 12 hours worth of raw recorded data and start work on the edits which we hope to do in the next few days.
Here is a short excerpt taken from the Kyrie of Schubert’s Mass in C recorded last night.
The second day of recordings at Prior Park College included Bob Chilcott’s “Nova Nova”, Mozart’s Laudate Dominum and the Kyrie from Schubert’s Mass in C. With the latter two pieces we were introduced to two of Prior Park’s stunning Soprano soloists and we were all amazed at the quality of these girls voices.
Prior Park College
In addition to the Director of Music, Roland Robertson, directing the choir, we also have 2 other teachers from the school who are acting as producers in the control room with myself and my sound engineer. This has meant we have had to implement our talk back system which enables the producers to talk directly to Roland in the Chapel from our location approximately 50 metres away. We are also able to offer play back both through multiple sets of headphones in the control room as well as through speakers into the chapel which means the choir are able to hear back the sections just recorded and therefore take on board the comments from the producer.
Technology aside, the most important aspect of all this is the quality of the actual recorded sound. Luckily as the college chapel isnt being used at the moment we are able to mark the exact microphone positions as one of the key elements to multi session recordings is that microphone placement needs to be exactly replicated between each session. This also means that when we go back and set everything up again later for this evenings session it takes less time to put up all the kit.