Under the direction of the late James Wild, the tour of 1982 was a formative experience - for me at least.
As a result of the trip, I have good friends in Lille, and am Godfather to Pauline Dupont. The music has stayed with me for the past twenty (almost) years and has given me and others great pleasure.
The choir consisted of maybe forty young voices. As a non-music student, I was in a distinct minority!
Several years after I had left Bretton, I took a trip to see Jim Wild and he let me have the cassette recordings which had been made on that tour. I took a few months getting my act together and finally came up with an edited digital recording which I then had made into a few CDs (they were expensive items a few years ago!). Naturally, I sent one of the CDs to Jim - at around Christmas time in 1996 - only to receive a phone call from his daughter, shortly after, to tell me that her father had died just weeks previously.
A couple of years ago (7 August 1999 to be exact), I went to a Prom to hear the London premiere of Turnage's "Silent Cities" and the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, as an encore, sang Orlando Gibbons' "The Silver Swan" - a beautiful part of the Bretton Singers' repertoire, although sadly not on the CD.
Using the navigation frame on the left, you can hear all of the songs on the CD. You can also view an album of photographs which I took in my assumed role of photographer. You can also have a few words in the guestbook, and order a copy of the soon-to-be-re-mastered CD.
If you have any pictures of the tour, upload them using the browse / submit button below and I will add them to the site:
Andrew Fox 2002
last updated: 25 November 2003 07:23
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