Music at St Mary’s

St Mary’s Church, in the heart of Swansea’s City Centre, demonstrates a strong commitment to music and the arts; it hosts regular arts festivals, concerts and exhibitions, and is keen to promote its own professionally directed Choral Programme.

There are three cathedral-style choral services a week during term time as part of the worship, mission and witness of St Mary’s Church, and offer significant musical and educational opportunities to the people of the City and County of Swansea.

Our Choral Scholarship Programme is in partnership with Swansea University and is supported by the Cathedral Music Trusthttps://cathedralmusictrust.org.uk/and the Swansea St Mary Choral Trust.http://www.swanseastmaryschoraltrust.org/

St Mary’s Church is affiliated to the Royal School of Church Music.https://www.rscm.org.uk/

Did you know that opportunities exist at St Mary’s to be part of the following?

St Mary’s Boy Choristers (ages 7-13)

Meet on Fridays for Junior Choir Practice 4.30pm-5.45pm (which includes the learning vocal technique, learning vocal technique, choral repertoire and music theory) and Sundays (Choral Eucharist and Choral Evensong) and Festivals.

St Mary’s Girl Choristers (age 7 upwards)

Junior girls meet on Fridays for Junior Choir Practice 4.30pm-5.45pm (which includes the learning vocal technique, choral repertoire and music theory) and Sundays (Choral Eucharist and Choral Evensong) and Festivals.

Senior girls feed into the SATB Choir (see below)as maturity and musical development allows.

St Mary’s Choir (SATB) an ambitious mixed-voice choir (teenaged girls, boys, and adults) singing a broad cathedral-style repertoire for two choral services every Sunday (11.00am Choral Eucharist and 4.00pm Choral Evensong), regular high profile city, regional and diocesan events, weddings, radio broadcasts, concerts and cathedral visits.  Weekly rehearsals, Fridays 7.30-9.00pm. Teenagers are particularly welcomed, as are adults with good sight-reading skills.

Choral Scholarshipsare offered in partnership with Swansea University, each to the value of £1000 p.a.

Younger singers receive:

• Freemembership withFreeprofessional choral training.
• Opportunity to be part of an outstandingly successful choir and have fun at the same time.
• Development of musical skills under the tutorship of a highly qualified professional choir director, experiencing church music at its best in a magnificent church with a superb acoustic.
• Choristers develop important life skills such as reading, teamwork, organisation, concentration, and self-confidence.
• Opportunity to sing alongside the University Choral Scholars and Gentlemen of the Choir
• Social events and trips, e.g.,Choristers’ Christmas Party, Summer Beach Party and BBQ.
• Choir members have been or gone on to become Cathedral Choristers, Choral Scholars, members of the National Youth Choir of Wales, and National Youth Choir of Great Britain.
• Ideal preparation for University Choral Scholarships (including Oxbridge).
• Younger members are gradually introduced to the full routine as their confidence and proficiency grows.
• Opportunity to learn the organ may also be available.
• As a longer-term plan, we envisage expanding opportunity to include a pattern of selected Tuesdays with additional training opportunities.

Furthermore…

• Opportunities in all voice parts and to sing in superb church acoustic ideally suited to choral music, and with a magnificent organ.
• Opportunity to receive vocal, music theory and organ tuition.
• Opportunity to develop a stylistic awareness of historically informed performance practice of choral music of the Renaissance and Baroque.
• Singing tours have included London, North Wales, Malvern Priory, Tewkesbury Abbey, and the cathedrals of Gloucester, Exeter, Hereford, Llandaff, St Davids, Bangor, Brecon, and Southwark.
• Numerous successes at RSCM Voice for Life exams (including Gold), and ABRSM singing, organ and theory exams, with further opportunities for young organists.
• Occasional radio broadcasts, most recently for BBC Radio Wales in January 2020.
• Performance of Handel’s Messiah in December 2019 at Swansea’s Brangwyn Hall with the Gower Chorale and with the British Sinfonietta,
• Occasionally services may be accompanied by the St Mary’s Chamber Orchestra (e.g., Masses by Haydn, Mozart, Schubert), Cambrian Viol Consort (for music by Gibbons, Tomkins, etc.), Cambrian Baroque strings (music by Purcell), or the Regimental Band of the Royal Welsh.
• Opportunity to attend RSCM events and residential courses, e.g., the annual RSCM Young Persons Choral Course at Kingswood School and Bath Abbey.
• Members of St Mary’s Choir have also been members of the National Youth Choir of Wales or the National Youth Choir of Great Britain, and some have gone on to become cathedral choristers, choral scholars, or Lay clerks.

University Choral Scholarships

• St Mary’s has provision for six Choral Scholars. These are in partnership with Swansea University and other funding bodies.On average, two scholarship places become available annually for new applicants.  Each scholarship is to the value of £1000 p.a. (which includes singing lessons or organ lessons and a bursary payment).  One of these places may instead be held as an Organ Scolarship.
• There are also opportunities for non-scholarship-holding students in all voice parts.
• Specialist choral training as part of St Mary’s Choir singing a wide-ranging Cathedral-style repertoire with the very finest of British and European choral music.
• Regular pattern of 11.00am Choral Eucharist and 4.00pm Choral Evensong on Sundays, with Choir Practice on Fridays, 7.30-9.00pm.
• Other musical opportunities (solo, ensemble, concerts), as appropriate.
• Assistance with transport may be possible.
• The deadline for choral scholarship applications is 15th October.  Application forms are available here: Choral Scholarships Form and Referee Form.  Auditions are then arranged for later in October.  For further details of Music at Swansea University, see: https://www.swansea.ac.uk/music/#d.en.25485

Come along to St Mary’s on a Friday evening for

Choir Practice at 7.30pm to meet us, join in and find out more,

or for further information, contact

Dr William Reynolds, Director of Music

(01792) 467606

twreynolds123@gmail.com

www.swanseastmary.co.uk

St Mary’s Church, St Mary’s Square, Swansea City Centre, SA1 3LP

Presentation of a £15,000 cheque to St Mary’s from the Friends of Cathedral Music in November 2017 as an endowment grant towards an additional choral scholarship, with Peter Allwood, Chairman of FCM, and the Most Revd John Davies, Archbishop of Wales.

Organist & Director of Music

Dr William Reynolds is Organist &Director of Music at St Mary's, Swansea, around which he maintains a busy portfolio as a freelance musician pursuing a wide range of activity including organ and harpsichord performance, choral conducting, editorial musicology, arts consultancy.  He is Regional Manager(Wales) for the Royal School of Church Music and a Visiting Music Tutor at Swansea University.  He is also Musical Director of the Gower Chorale.

William studied music at University of Wales, Bangor, where he gained the degrees of BMus, MA and PhD (his doctoral research surveyed Music and Liturgy in Wales and the Borderlands, c.1485-c.1642).  He has had research articles published in theJournal of the Royal College of Organists, theJournal of the British Institute of Organ Studies, and Welsh Music History, with Cathedral Press publishing some of his performing editions of seventeenth-century anthems.  He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists, and holds performance diplomas from Trinity College of Music, London, and the Royal Schools of Music.  Before moving to Swansea he worked as a tutor in the School of Continuing Education at University of Wales, Bangor, as a lecturer at Coleg Menai, was Organist at Christ College, Brecon, Sub-Organist at Cardiff Metropolitan Cathedral, and Organ Scholar at Bangor Cathedral.  His organ teachers have included Andrew Goodwin, Martin Souter, Huw TregellesWilliams, and Jane Watts.

He has appeared on radio and television as a choral conductor and organist, has recorded as an organ accompanist on the SAIN label, and has performed in France (including Notre Dame, Paris), Belgium and Malta, and has twice given solo organ recital tours to Italy (2009 and 2016).  In 2012 William participated in an international organ masterclass week at the Prins Claus Conservatoire in Groningen, Holland, with the privilege of playing numerous organs dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

In 2012 he was presented with The Archbishop of Wales' Award for Church Music for his services to church music in Wales and at St Mary's.

Our Team of Assistant Organists:

Mr Andrew Goodwin, MA, FRCO, AWACM

Mr Huw Tregelles Williams, OBE, DL, BMus, MA, HonDLitt, FRCO

The Organ at St Mary’s

Wm. Hill & Son and Norman & Beard Ltd installed the present 3-manual organ in St Mary’s in 1958 in readiness for the reconsecration of St Mary’s in 1959.  This instrument had originally been built in 1912 for Woolwich Town Hall as a memorial to Edward VII.  There have been several subsequent modifications, most recently the addition of a 32’ Contra-Trombone rank in 2010.  The organ is in regular use for the accompaniment of services, for teaching, for music examinations, and for concerts.  In 2012 we hosted a study day for The Royal College of Organists.  Eminent recitalists who have performed at St Mary’s include Fernando Germani, André Marchal, Dr Francis Jackson, Sir George Thalben Ball, Dame Gillian Weir and Carlo Curley, and our Summer Organ Series has become an established part of the St Mary’s diary for Tuesday lunchtimes from July to September. 

A specification of the organ can be found on the National Pipe Organ Registry website:

https://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=D07281