Sedbergh Music Festival 2010

Ripon Cathedral Choir comprises sixteen boy choristers, twenty two girl choristers and six lay clerks singing eight services each week. The boys and girls normally sing separately with the lay clerks, but occasionally perform together for special occasions such as concerts and major services.

The boy choristers are educated at the Cathedral Choir School and the girl choristers are recruited from a variety of schools within the local area. Choristers who attend the Choir School receive scholarships, and further bursarial assistance up to 100% of the fees is available where required. In addition to their choir duties, choristers learn two musical instruments and the boys receive individual singing lessons from the Cathedral Vocal Coach.

Outwith singing services the choir maintains a busy schedule of recordings and concerts. Recent CDs include A thing most wonderful (Music for Holy Week and Easter), Christmas at Ripon Cathedral, and Dear Lord and Father (Hymns and hymn anthems). The choir is frequently to be heard on radio including Classic FM and features regularly in the Choral Evensong schedule on BBC Radio 3. Concerts have included Handel’s Coronation Anthems at the Foundling Museum in London, the Sedbergh Festival, various performances in churches throughout the north of England, and performances of Handel’s Messiah, and requiems by Faure, Durufle and Rutter in the Cathedral. In recent years the choir has undertaken tours to Holland, Germany, Luxembourg, Wales and Scotland.

Andrew Bryden was appointed Director of Music of Ripon Cathedral in 2003 having previously been Assistant Organist and Director of Music at Ripon Cathedral Choir School since 1998. He is responsible for the provision of music for the daily services and his work with the cathedral choir has received widespread acclaim.

He was educated at Aberdeen University where he was an organ scholar specialising in performance and editorial techniques, and studied organ with Roger Bevan Williams, George McPhee, Timothy Byram-Wigfield and David Sanger. Following cathedral and church appointments in Aberdeen and Sheffield Andrew was appointed Organ Scholar of Canterbury Cathedral in 1994, and combined this with the post of Organist and Head of Academic Music at St. Edmund’s School, Canterbury.

As an accompanist and recitalist he has played at many of the major venues in the United Kingdom, and has undertaken tours to Holland, Germany, Austria and North America. He has been broadcast on both BBC and independent radio and television and has made a number of CD recordings on the Priory, Cantoris, Regent and York Ambisonic labels.

In addition to his work at Ripon Cathedral, Andrew is an examiner for ABRSM and is active as a composer. Much of his compositional output is written for the liturgical needs of Ripon Cathedral, although commissions are a regular feature of his work. Some of these works are published by Encore Publications. A mass for upper voices and a carol set to commissioned words will be published later this year.

Edmund Aldhouse began his musical training as a chorister at Manchester Cathedral, whilst studying the piano at Chetham’s School of Music. He held the Organ Scholarship at Pembroke College Oxford, graduating in 2001 with First Class Honours in Modern Languages. Having been appointed Organ Scholar at Chichester Cathedral in 2001, he became Sub-Organist of Rochester Cathedral the following year, where he directed the Girls’ Choir, participated in several foreign tours and played for a number of live BBC broadcasts.

He has performed widely as an accompanist and recitalist in venues in the UK, France, the Netherlands and the USA. His strong interest in French organ music led him to study repertoire and improvisation with Frédéric Blanc in Paris in 2000, and inspired him to return to France in 2006 to study with François-Henri Houbart at the Conservatoire in Rueil-Malmaison, where he obtained a unanimous Premier Prix de Virtuosité in 2008. He has been Assistant Director of Music at Ripon Cathedral since January 2009.

Ripon Cathedral Choir