Hitting the right notes at York Mystery Plays

Tue 17 Jul 2012

Scpres of singers and brass band players are preparing to bring music to the York Mystery Plays next month.

A choir of about 72 singers and a brass band of ten players will perform during each performance when the plays are staged in the Museum Gardens throughout August.

Composer Christopher Madin said he had written 46 original pieces for the choir, lasting from about 30 seconds to three and a half minutes.

He said a majority of choir members were women, and they ranged in age from just six to 60-plus.

The choir, which would be seated on stage throughout, would bring a “cosmic” element to the production, for example when they sang as the Angel Gabriel appeared to the shepherds.

But the band, which would enter and leave the stage at different times, would play more earthly music, for example when it played a fanfare at the court of King Herod.

He said he had composed about 21 pieces for the band, whose members were drawn from some of York’s biggest and best known brass bands.

He said when the appeal had originally gone out for singers and brass band members, he had had no idea of the standard of the volunteers who would come forward, but he had been struck by their “incredible quality”.

Work on building the stage and covered stands for a nightly audience of 1,400 is now at an advanced stage, with the plays due to be performed for the first time on Thursday, August 2.

More than 19,000 tickets have been sold, with hundreds more going every day.

Read the article on The Press website here.