1. Os mutorum, lux cecorum
2. Loquebar de testimoniis tuis
3. River Erne horn duet
4. Adiutor laborantium
5. Sanctorum piissime Columba
6. Lauda anima mea Dominum
7. Noli Pater
8. Carne solutus pater Columba
9. Amen dico vobis
10. Liberasti nos Domine
11. Cantemus in omni die
12. Altus prosator
13. Volens Ihesus linire
14. Laudate Dominum (Psalm 150)
15. The Desperate Battle of the Birds

This groundbreaking programme from Geoffrey Webber’s consistently inventive choir seeks to recreate three distinct sound-worlds. Just as the influence of Irish monks extended not only across Scotland but also to mainland Europe, so we imagine our way back down the centuries into 7th-century hermits’ cells, 10th-century Celtic foundations in Switzerland, and the 14thcentury world of Inchcolm Abbey, the ‘Iona of the East’ in the Firth of Forth. Silent footprints of musical activity – the evidence of early notation but also of stone carvings, manuscript illuminations, and documents of the early Church – have guided both vocal and instrumental approaches in the choir’s work with scholar and piper Barnaby Brown, an exciting extended collaboration which was further informed by oral traditions from as far afield as Sardinia and the Outer Hebrides.

The Choir have often specialised in the rediscovery of forgotten choral repertories, including previously unpublished music from within the English choral tradition and beyond, and their five recordings on Delphian reflect this. Among the accolades they have received, their 2011 recording of music by the leading British composer Judith Weir (Delphian DCD34095) was BBC Music Magazine’s Choral and Song Choice in December 2011. The choir has also joined together with the Choir of King’s College London in two recording projects Rodion Shchedrin’s ‘Russian liturgy’ The Sealed Angel (Delphian DCD34067) and, most recently, Deutsche Motette: German Romantic choral music from Schubert to Strauss (Delphian DCD34124).

'these are the kind of performances that make you want to stand up and cheer even if you're the only person in the room ’

– International Record Review