In an effort to save cash, the skilled choir at Belfast Cathedral is to be disbanded and changed with a voluntary grownup choir.
The choice, revealed in an announcement from the Dean and the honorary secretary of the Board of Belfast Cathedral, will make the full-time director of music Matthew Owens redundant owing to the cathedral’s ‘troublesome monetary circumstances.’ Owens, who, in 2019, left his long-held position as Organist and Grasp of the Choristers at Wells Cathedral to take up the place at Belfast, might be changed by a part-time Cathedral Choir Director – a change that may come into impact from 1 September.
Music has shaped a central a part of the cathedral’s actions since its consecration in 1904. For the previous three years, the cathedral has run two choirs: one for girls and boys aged 7-13 and knowledgeable grownup choir. Owens got here to his place as Music Director with a wealth of expertise, having served as Organist and Grasp of the Music at St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, Edinburgh prior even to his position at Wells.
Responding to the announcement, Peter Allwood, Chair of the Cathedral Music Belief, described the choice to disband the choir as ‘an actual blow’ for the cathedral, its musicians and its area people. ‘Over latest years, the choir has gained a repute for musical excellence in Northern Eire, not solely by sung cathedral providers but in addition concert events, broadcasts and recordings,’ he stated in an announcement. ‘Expertise exhibits that this stage of musical success might be not possible to keep up beneath part-time management and voluntary singers.’
The assertion from the cathedral stated: ‘Alongside founding and creating Belfast Cathedral Youngsters’s Choir, Matthew’s management and imaginative and prescient have seen Belfast Cathedral Choir attain new ranges of excellence in supporting the worshipping lifetime of this place, and luxuriate in appreciable worldwide reputation by its Resonus Classics recordings. Matthew might be enormously missed, and we want him and his household each continued success.’
Photograph: Getty
