A Gaelic Blessing is a simple and catchy piece by Craig McLeish. This piece will be particularly useful for school, junior and community choirs, and a tuneful introduction to singing simple contrapuntal lines. The second soprano part repeats the tune at bar 33 and should dominate here - the first sopranos and altos should support appropriately. Ease and beauty of tone should be of paramount importance throughout. An inspiring selection of new works from a range of contemporary composers, the Novello New Choral Series offers pieces for all types of choirs, including sacred and secular works from simple, four-part settings to more expansive, yet accessible, repertoire in an exciting variety of styles. Craig McLeish began his musical life as a chorister at St Paul's Cathedral under Barry Rose. He began composing at the age of ten and his preces and responses for four trebles are still in the repertoire. After a degree at York University he returned to London to study at the Guildhall and sang again at St Paul's as a tenor. At the time he also arranged and copied music for West End shows such as Les Miserables and Miss Saigon, and played bass guitar for various groups. This led to a spell in the cult pop band 'Fat and Frantic', who shaved the top 100 twice with the whimsical anthem Last night my wife hoovered my head. He also worked as musical assistant for David Heneker (Half a Sixpence) and David Fanshawe (African Sanctus). In 1992 Craig became director of the Methodist Association of Youth Clubs Orchestra and Singers, performing concerts throughout the UK and becoming involved in a number of recordings and BBC broadcasts. During this time he arranged more than 250 orchestral scores ranging from Queen to Calamity Jane, Stravinsky and Stevie Wonder. Alongside this he began arranging and writing songs for children's collections (Big Blue Planet, Love Shone Down) and producing recordings and string arrangements for various artists (Sheila Walsh, Kim Hill, Matt Redman). He is also well known as a conductor and arranger for Songs of Praise. Recently Craig has collaborated with composer Tolga Kashif writing orchestrations for the RPO's Seo Taiji Symphony, the Classic FM chart-topping CD by saxophonist Tyler Rix, and the Genesis Suite which was premiered at the Barbican. He has been musical director of Young Voices UK for 13 years, bringing large school choirs together to play with a live band and solo artists, and currently conducts the Milton Keynes Community Choir, Hart and Soul Community Choir and the Milton Keynes Youth Choir. / Choeur SSA

from Requiem-Last year Karl Jenkins' 'Requiem' for mixed choir and orchestra was a sensational success above all in Great Britain. Now Boosey & Hawkes publish some of the most beautiful movements of the work in separate editions for various choral combinations and piano.Three evocative and contrasting Haiku settings for upper voices from this chart-topping piece of music by the composer of Adiemus.

Welcome is a work composed by Edward Gregson arranged for Upper Voices and Piano. It was originally composed for boys' voices Organ Brass and Percussion in 1996 but ten years later Gregson created a new version especially for the Kinder Children's Choir of the High Peak. This latter version appears here and lasts around 4 minutes. The text of Welcome consists of the word 'Welcome' repeated numerous times in a variety of languages from English to various European languages to Hebrew and Arabic. Gregson's idea was to provide a fitting way to welcome a new and diverse audience into a newconcert hall designed for a new Millennium. The voices are divided into as many as six parts in certain places but it's left to the conductor to decide on how to distribute these parts depending on the size and make-up of the choir. The work is suitable for performance by any mixture of upper voices from children's choirs to female voices. In the January/February 2016 issue of Choir & Organ Geoffrey Webber calls Welcome 'an ear-catching start for any concert programme.'