Choirs at St Edmundsbury Cathedral, Bury St Edmunds, go paperless

The choirs at St Edmundsbury Cathedral, Bury St Edmunds, have gone paperless allowing them to carry on giving 'first class performances' at services and rehearsals.

All the music required for their performances is now delivered on tablets, a shift made after coronavirus hit and they had to adapt to working remotely.

One advantage of using the tablets is that when a change or annotation is needed on the music, it can be done by one person and then all copies of the music are automatically updated on individual tablets.

William Saunders, music advisor at the Cathedral, said the new technology was proving invaluable.

"This technology is really helping improve our performance, as well as contributing to our efforts to reduce the use of paper," he said.

St Edmundsbury Cathedral fields five youth and adult choirs providing music for the daily services at the Cathedral.

Despite the challenges kicked up by coronavirus, the choirs were very active online during the first lockdown, and have a number of events coming up.

Next Tuesday, the boy and girl choristers will join forces to sing Evensong at 5.30pm in the Cathedral for the first time.

The new girl choristers have been recruited during the pandemic, so this is the first time they will have sung at a service.

William said: "This is a really exciting moment for the Cathedral.

"The choristers have worked really hard, rehearsing online and in an empty Cathedral, but nothing can match the thrill of singing for the first time in the beautiful setting of the Cathedral."

The choristers will be singing at Christmas services as well as providing music online as part of a musical Advent calendar: https://stedscathedral.org/music/advent-calendar

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