fp: Choir of Metropolitan Cathedral Liverpool, Dir. Christopher McElroy 

This work uses as its source the Ave Maris Stella plainchant ascribed to Venantius Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers (c.600) and is influenced by medieval, Renaissance and modern practices. Meditative and spiritual, the work juxtaposes fragments of the original plainchant, commencing in the lowest register and gradually ascending through the voice ranges to a solo treble voice. The composer has written “I have attempted to produce a shifting, seamless continuum, aspiring to a restrained serene beauty, a joy, and ultimately transcendence: a window onto the ‘beyond’”.