The Ramsey Singers: Men & Angels
Ulysses Arts

On Men & Angels, The Ramsey Singers, founded in 1987 and led by London-born Director Mark Fenton, features twenty-eight English vocalists—eleven sopranos, five altos, five tenors, and seven basses. All of the composers presented on the sixty-four-minute collection are living, yet their pieces, many of them premiere recordings, are so period-transcending they could have originated from this century or earlier ones. An obvious explanation for this, of course, is that the music is performed a cappella and thus establishes no instrumental tie to a specific era; another is that the new compositions align themselves to the great choral music tradition and are tailor-made for the ensemble's frequent performances at English cathedrals. In fact, the group has presented many of the album's pieces at Canterbury Cathedral, York Minster, St. Paul's Cathedral, and Westminster Abbey, as well as at Sacré Coeur.

That so many of the works are recent—and many by female composers—attests to the ongoing vitality of the English church music tradition and how amenable it is to new voices. That's also due in part to the active commissioning of new works by The Ramsey Singers to add to the repertoire. The range of composers featured is impressive, Alec Roth the earliest born and the youngest, Lucy Walker, born in 1998 and a full half-century later. Joining them are Philip Stopford, Kerena Briggs, James Lavino, Ben Ponniah, Jeremy Woodside, Sarah MacDonald, and Jonathan Rathbone, many of them represented by multiple selections on the release. That almost every one has extensive experience singing in choirs naturally enhances their ability to compose for the vocal group. The same could be said for Fenton on the directing front, the Cambridge grad having sung in the choirs of St. Catharine's College and Chelmsford Cathedral long before founding The Ramsey Singers.

Detailed liner notes by Fenton illuminate the works performed. We learn, for example, that Stopford's My Beloved Spake was commissioned by a groom for his bride on their 2015 wedding day, and that the Philadelphia-born Lavino studied at both Julliard and the Royal Academy of Music and composed music for the opening of the National 9/11 Museum in New York. The writing of some pieces was influenced by things that were happening in the composers' lives and in the world around them. Whereas Ponniah chose the text for his comforting 2020 setting Thou wilt keep them upon witnessing the fear and panic gripping people during the pandemic, his 2019 piece O Lord, Support Us was written when he was struggling with the emotional upset of divorce and attempting to find peace in his daily life. As is so often the case, such background context enhances listening appreciation.

Stopford's blissful My Beloved Spake inaugurates the recording splendidly, its gorgeous harmonies and graceful counterpoint boding well for the fifteen pieces that follow. The singers' voices also soar magnificently in his Truro Magnificat and Truro Nunc Dimittis, and as stirring is Walker's Oculi Omnium, wherein the voices blossom radiantly before resolving peacefully. Written to celebrate the group's thirtieth anniversary, Lavino's Light swells rapturously as it works through a series of ornate melodic lines and showcases the rich blend of its upper and lower voices. His Latin-set Magnificat is distinguished by altoist Jenny Broom's plaintive solo passages and quietly exultant full-choir sections. Briggs' The Preces and The Responses do something similar in alternating between the hush of the full choir and the oft-monotone delivery of a lone male singer. Roth's titular work likewise separates itself from the others in having different singers represent different entities: lower voices for human beings, upper for angels, and the two combined in the chorus—a design effective on both musical and conceptual grounds.

June 2023