St Anne’s to launch new CD of Christmas music

A NEW CD of Christmas music by the choristers of St Anne’s Cathedral in Belfast will be launched tonight in the run-up to the annual Black Santa Sit-Out.

The recording is entitled Born on a New Day and is directed by the master of the choristers, David Stevens.

Last night, the Donegall Street cathedral also hosted the Northern Ireland Hospice carol service, where UTV news anchor Paul Clark gave one of the readings.

The CD features the unaccompaniedvoicesoftheCathedral Girls’ Choir and lay clerks as they sing many seasonal favourites and some less well-known Christmasmusic.TheyincludeJohn Rutter’s Angels We Have Heard on High, and the familiar Once in Royal David’s City, written by the wife of a former Bishop of Derry, Mrs Cecil Frances Alexander.

Since Mr Stevens took on the choir in 2012, the work of the cathedral’s music department has been greatly extended. As well as the girls’ and lay clerks’ choirs there are also junior girls’ and boys’ choirs. The Cathedral also runs a successful cross-community choir.

Plans are being finalised for this year’s Black Santa Sit-Out which takes place in the week before Christmas. This will be its first year without a Dean of Belfast in post, following the departure of Dean John Mann in the autumn. The new Dean-elect, the Rev Stephen Forde, will be installed on February 4.