A playlist featuring various sacred and secular choral works by Kerry Andrew.

For more music (and soon a full catalogue), please visit www.kerryandrew.net

CHORAL MUSIC

The Bells is a secular carol setting of an Edgar Allen Poe poem. It was commissioned by The Sunday Boys and premiered by them at Manchester Cathedral on December 2nd, 2022.

The Bells performed by The Sunday Boys

A haunting carol that combines irregular melodic lines with lilting ostinato passages. It sets several ancient texts.

For SSATB Choir, with optional Soprano solo. 
Available to purchase at Oxford University Press: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/adam-and-the-mother-9780193365674?cc=gb&lang=en&

Adam And The Mother

Part 4 of my late-night mass, 'dusksongs', which was first commissioned and recorded by The Ebor Singers. 

This is a Celtic song not often heard as part of the Compline Mass. I've set it for solo alto, with the rest of the choir gradually ghosting in with textural and then pitched sustained material which echoes the mantra-like solo.

criosda liom a cadal from dusksongs

An anthem originally published by Oxford University Press in their anthology 'Cantica Nova', this piece inspired The Ebor Singers to commission a large-scale late-night mass with this existing work as its last piece. 'dusksongs' now finishes with this piece, which also works performed on its own and has since been published by OUP as a stand-alone copy.

o lux beata trinitas

A piece for female voices (originally written for single voices, but arranged for choir), and performed here by York University's The 24. Hexennacht means 'witches' night' and refers to Walpurgis Night, a spring festival on April 30th.

Hexennacht

'Fall' by Kerry Andrew: SATB Choir (10 mins) commissioned by the Joyful Company of Singers and premiered at Cadogan Hall, March 2010.

Fall JCOS Kerry Andrew

An early choral work (2003), and the winner of the inaugural Temple Church Choir competition. 'Maranatha' sets just this word and its English meanings 'Lord, come' and 'The Lord has come'.

It is performed here by the Temple Church Choir and conducted by Stephen Layton.

It is published by Faber Music and can be purchased here: https://www.musicroom.com/product-detail/product62661/variant62661/kerry-andrew-maranatha/

composition demo

Maranatha

'Who We Are' was commissioned by the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain to open their concert at the Royal Albert Hall in 2016. It broadly addresses themes of unity and identity, using various iterations of the words 'who/we/are/you/I/don't/know'.

It was written for massed youth choirs - Girls' Choir, Boys' Choir, Training Choir, Main Choir and Chamber Choir Girls - but the choir parts can be divided up amongst a large (100+) youth choir.

Do watch the fantastic video of the NYCGB to see the choreography and body percussion in action! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDSPCA8rMBo

Please visit www.kerryandrew.net for details on acquiring a perusal score or purchasing a score.

Who We Are

Commissioned by the London Contemporary Church Music Festival, and premiered at St Pancras Church, May 13th 2015 and broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.

I am fascinated by the influence of Anglo-Saxon, Germanic and Norse mythology on Christianity in the Middle Ages. Christian poets attempted to appeal to those still embedded in the pagan traditions, adapting the gospels to fit the cultural climate. It is particularly apparent in what is often called the earliest English poem, The Dream of The Rood, which exists in three forms: on runes on the 7th-century stone Ruthwell Cross in Dumfriesshire, Scotland (although it was possibly added later, a sort of Middle Ages graffiti); in Old English on parchment on the 10th-century expanded version in the Vercelli book in Northern Italy; and on silver, in Roman letters on the Brussels Cross made in Wessex. The symbol of the cross took on an especially Germanic/Celtic flavour in the 7th century, represented as both a battle-standard and as a version of the Tree of Life – and it is strangely reminiscent of the Norse god Odin’s quest to glean the meaning of life by hanging himself on the great tree Yggdrasil for nine days and nine nights.

The Dream of the Rood is an incredibly evocative poem notable for its mystical, dream-like quality and a sense of heroism, with its depiction of Jesus Christ as a proactive, perhaps even aggressive, warrior. It uses a riddle-like opening in which the poet dreams of the tree which was the cross bearing Christ at the crucifixion. The tree then speaks to him in his dream, describing in vivid, fleshy imagery its own wounds as if it itself experienced the torture with and for Christ. The section that was added in the Vercelli version has the tree explain Christ’s ultimate triumph and the salvation message, before the poet/dreamer’s renewed sense of hope.

It is a lengthy poem in the expanded form; I wanted to create my own loose translation of the text, and particularly used Michael Alexander’s (The Earliest English Poems, Penguin) and Mary Rambaran-Olm’s (dreamoftherood.co.uk) as the basis for my own, fragmented and reduced version. I borrowed fragments of the original Old English poem for the ‘tree-speak’.

For the ‘song of tears’, I used a rough transcription of a keening song as sung by Kitty Gallagher and recorded by Alan Lomax in 1951 (2015 is his centenary) on World Library of Folk and Primitive Music, Vo. 2: Ireland (Rounder, 1998).

Dream Of The Rood (fragments)LIVE

Commissioned by Created Out of Mind/Wellcome Trust for the National Youth Choir of Great Britain. This is the choral version (it can also be sung by 8 single voices).

PPA (Primary Progressive Aphasia) is a dementia that affects different people in different ways, but includes semantic dementia, in which people affected might have difficulty finding the right word, and/or talking in a garrulous, roundabout way; and Progressive Non-Fluent Dementia, where people might be slower in speaking and begin to stutter, and/or begin to lose the meaning of the words as well as the words themselves.

I was especially struck by a short video from Created Out of Mind's research, in which a subject described tying up roses that had been disarrayed in the wind. Unlike some of those affected by PPA, this gentleman was very fluent in describing his morning activity in the garden, with demonstrative gestures; he just didn’t have the particular word to describe his main subject. 

I wanted to create a piece that set his words and was very subtly influenced by other forms of PPA. The aim was for a sense of unpredictable fluency; one in which very common words were treated as musically as more poetic ones might usually be; and one in which the creativity of the human mind in developing other ways to communicate is celebrated.

By Any Other Name choral version (LIVE)

Kerry Andrew is a composer, performer and author based in West  Yorkshire, England. 

They specialises in vocal music and opera, choral music, folk, jazz, and community music. Choral and experimental work has been heard on BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, 6Music and Classic FM and on national news channels. Kerry won a British Composer Award in 2010 and two more for her chamber operas 'Woodwose' and 'Dart's Love' in 2014. They won their 4th for 'who we are' for the National Youth Choirs at the Royal Albert Hall. They were 2010-12's Handel House Composer in Residence. In 2017, she made her Proms debut with BBC Ten Pieces.

Her debut novel, Swansong, is out now: https://www.waterstones.com/book/swansong/kerry-andrew/9781911214229 and her second novel, SKIN, is published in February 2021.

Kerry performs as alt-folk artist You Are Wolf http://soundcloud.com/you-are-wolf; music can be heard and ordered here: https://youarewolf.bandcamp.com/

She performs with the award-winning vocal trio https://soundcloud.com/juicevocalensembleuk

She also performs with the jazz/classical/rock collective https://soundcloud.com/dollyman.

‘Stunning‘ Classic FM

‘Brilliant, Berio-like vocal effects…‘ The Times

www.kerryandrew.net

CHORAL MUSIC

Kerry Andrew Composer