In the eighth release in Regent's “A Year at” series we visit the Abbey Church in Tewkesbury, dedicated to St Mary the Virgin. Appropriately, the programme includes music for the major Marian feasts, as well as other main feasts of the church’s year.

Additionally, the choir commissions a new work annually and three recent works, from David Bednall, Grayston Ives, and Matthew Martin, are included here. Two are receiving their first recording.

The Schola Cantorum’s raison d’etre is to sing Evensong during the week throughout school term time. This tradition at Tewkesbury was revived forty years ago in 1974 when the Choir of the Abbey School sang its first service of Choral Evensong. Since the Abbey School closed in 2006, the choristers have been educated at Dean Close Preparatory School in Cheltenham. Ever since the sixteen boy choristers and the lay clerks have continued their daily offering of worship in the peaceful surroundings of the Abbey. In recent years the Schola Cantorum has appeared on a number of highly-regarded recordings.

Simon Bell was appointed as Director of the Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum in 2012. He was previously at Winchester Cathedral where he held the position of Assistant Director of Music.