From the British singer/songwriter Sam Smith this pop ballad found major chart success across the globe. With a message of heartache and loss this piano-driven track features simple emotional lyrics that will resonate with choirs and audiences everywhere.

In Flanders Fields is a series of poignant and evocative choral works with a theme of reconciliation and remembrance set to iconic texts by John McCrae and Rupert Brooke.Alan Smith was born in London in 1962 and spent his childhood in Croydon. He sang with various local choirs and attended the nearby Royal School of Church Music where he began organ lessons with Michael Fleming at the age of ten. He was appointed as Organist and Choirmaster of a local church at the age of 16 and later became Organ Scholar at Kings' College London where he studied from 1981 to 1984. As part of his music degree he specialized in composition studying with Nicola LeFanu David Lumsdaine and George Nicholson.Following postgraduate training at the London Institute of Education Alan began his teaching career. After working in various schools he became Head of Music at Hazelwick School Crawley in 1990 a post he continues to hold. In the same year he came to some prominence by winning the RSCM's annual composing competition. His successful entry Let the Peoples Praise You became his first published piece and continues to be widely performed. Since then his choral compositions have won several awards most recently the Thornesian Prize in 2003 and an honorable mention in the 2004 Vanguard Premieres Competition.Alan's output is predominantly of choral and vocal music much of it written for specific choirs or occasions and his catalogue runs to over 150 works. In the UK his music is published by Animus Curiad Cantiones Press Escorial Edition Fagus Music and RSCM while in America he is published by Abingdon Press CanticaNOVA OUP Pavane and Roger Dean.Since 1998 Alan has been Director of Music at St Andrew's church in Burgess Hill West Sussex where he lives with his wife and three children.

Edited by Geoffrey Bush and Michael Hurd Four glees and madrigals by Pearsall, Stafford, Smith, Walmisley and S. Wesley. SSATB CONTENTS PEARSALL, R.L. Why weeps, alas! my lady-love STAFFORD SMITH, J. Blest pair of sirens WALMISLEY, T.A. Sweete floweres! ye were too faire WESLEY, Samuel O sing unto mie Roundelaie

from Pitch Perfect 2-Featured in Pitch Perfect 2 at the heartwarming conclusion to the film this song by British pop sensation Jessie J offers a musical and emotional impact that is instantly appealing.Weaving through the entire film and later crossing over to the pop charts this song has enduring power to engage singers and audiences.

Remember Bethlehem was conceived after a conversation on the works of the late story-telling songsmith Jake Thackray. Thackray’s sometimes bawdy sometimes satirical and often hilarious lyrics are delivered in a lugubrious baritone and underpinned by a strong Yorkshire accent that led him to be dubbed the “North Country Noel Coward”. In his Remember Bethlehem heshows a more tender side and tells a story devoid of expletives and cutting social commentary of a “shabby little country girl” completely broken by the ardours of her journey arriving in Bethlehem as a distrusted foreigner to give birth to baby boy called Jesus. Whatstruck and moved me most about Thackray’s telling of the Nativity Narrative is the way he normalizes Mary. Rather than retrospectively beatifying her - telling her story full in the knowledge of the extraordinary thing she did (as most nativity stories do) – Thackray’s portrayal of her as young afraid and cold makes her achievement all the more astonishing. Indeed so out-of-the-ordinary is the gift given by this apparently ordinary girl that no one and no thing can ever forget it: “Even the stony old hills […] your shaggy old trees […] the sulky old sun Remembers Bethlehem.” My carol of the same name adapts a similar approach to telling Mary’s story. Musically I have only thinly veiled my affection for Peter Warlock’s miniature masterpiece Bethlehem Down and evidence of this can be seen not only in the choice of key triple metre and strophic setting but also in the resemblance of some of the cadential figures. A final strand of influence comes once more from Yorkshire and specifically Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre. My wife is a literature scholar and pointed out to me the parallels between Mary’s plight in Thackray’s story and a scene from the novel in which Jane is lost up on the moors. Through her distrust of man she feels outcast and