Ulster Consort – New Sounds at St Molua’s Church, Stormont

The Ulster Consort "New Sounds" at St Molua's Church, Saturday, 4 October 2025, 6 pm

This year I finally had the chance to attend the Ulster Consort’s New Sounds concert — a celebration of contemporary choral music held in the beautiful acoustic of St Molua’s Church, Stormont.

The programme is part of The Cranmer Anthem Book project, initiated by conductor and composer Matthew Owens in 2017. The project aims to commission new settings of all 88 Collects (or prayers) from the Book of Common Prayer, originally written by Tudor Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556). As Owens explains, the vision is “to reimagine Cranmer’s words through the voices of today’s composers.”

This concert presented ten world premieres, eight of which were introduced through short video interviews with the composers. These introductions offered fascinating insights into their creative thinking — what they cared most about when setting the text: the singability of the melody, the preservation of their personal style, or the interpretation of the sacred words themselves.

A recurring theme in the interviews was the brief. Owens asked several composers whether they found the brief restrictive, which made me wonder what it actually looked like. Was everyone working under the same set of instructions? How “strict” was it meant to be? As a composer myself, I often find that the stricter the brief, the more interesting it becomes — figuring out how to work within the rules while keeping my own voice and trying new ideas is always the most enjoyable part of the puzzle.

Another thought stayed with me: Do singers write better choral music?I tend to think they do. Singers naturally write idiomatically for the voice — they understand how it feels to breathe, to phrase, to sustain. But there’s a trade-off. Non-singers might not have that instinctive vocal sense, yet they often bring fresh sonic ideas and textures that challenge convention and expand the choral palette.

Overall, New Sounds was more than a concert — it was a conversation between composers, performers, and audience about what choral music can be today. It’s heartening to see the Ulster Consort continuing to champion new work with such care and curiosity. Projects like this remind us that sacred words can always find new life in the hands (and voices) of creative musicians.