Encores for Choirs 2

Peter Gritton studied music at Clare College, Cambridge before taking up a post at Christ Church, Oxford as a countertenor Lay Clerk. Peter has sung with a variety of groups including The Sixteen, The Cambridge Singers, Gabrieli Consort, I Fagiolini, and a close harmony group, The Light Blues, with whom he has travelled worldwide. He is currently Director of Music at St Paul's School. London, as well as enjoying a busy schedule composing, arranging, and singing.

Anyone who has tried their hand at programming concerts will know that finding a closer, the piece that will convincingly end the show and bring the house down, is the heardest thing to find. Peter Gritton's new OUP publication, Encores for Choires 2 will, however, make it a little easier - one suspects a few of these numbers will be cropping up in choral competitions over the coming years! . . . But looking at familiar material in a new light is a welcome provocation and a strength of this highly entertaining volume.

• A Modern Major-General ; Auld Lang Syne ; Bring us in good ale ; Buffalo Gals ; Calmes des nuits ; Chick, chick, chicken! ; Counting Up My Toes ; Country Gardens ; Dashing Away with the Smoothing Iron ; Deconstructing Johann ; Dry Bones ; El Hambo ; Ev'ry time I feel the Spirit ; Good Hope ; Ill Wind ; It was a lover and his lass ; Jargon ; Mission: Impossible ; Nachtlied ; Orpheus in the Underground ; Parting Friends ; Shenandoah ; Stranger in Paradise ; Take it from Figure 'O' Arthur Sullivan ; The tide rises, the tide falls ; Three-minute Messiah ; 'Un'-Popular Song ; Vocalise ; Wiegenlied