A-choiring a new direction

MARK Duley, director of music at Dublin's Church Cathedral, hails from New Zealand. After taking two music degrees in Auckland, he headed for Europe on a scholarship, "which I proceeded to spend in a spree around Europe with several other New Zealanders in a Combi van, which is the sort of thing New Zealanders do. Then I had to work for a bit to get the money back."

He did, however, fit in "two or three concentrated years in North Germany and at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam", where his focus was on organ studies. The wonderful instruments there, he maintains, "can teach you more than any teacher, in fact". A period working for a public school in England preceded his arrival in Ireland, where Christ Church attracted him by virtue of what he divined as its special potential.

"In cathedral jobs," he explains, "you're most of the time working within a tradition that has been up and running for several hundred years. Things are done as they have always been done, and there's actually not much room for manoeuvre. But here, the tradition had broken when the choir school closed in the 1970s.

"Out of what was in essence a pragmatic approach came something rather good, which is the mixed choir that the cathedral now has. I saw the potential of that, really what it could achieve and what it could be for the cathedral and the city, and also what the cathedral could do for the city in terms of its broader ministry or outreach, or whatever of those keywords you like to use."

Since his arrival in 1992 he has started to take the cathedral choir on tours (venturing out of Ireland for the first time as part of the choir's 500th anniversary celebrations), set up a Choir 500 Foundation to safeguard the cathedral's musical tradition (this project has already won an AIB Better Ireland Award) and established a new girls' choir. Most recently he dipped into the wider instrumental world by launching the ensemble Christ Church Baroque for performances in tandem with the cathedral choirs.

With funding from the Cultural Relations Committee of the Department of Foreign Affairs the choir will have a week long residency at Westminster Abbey in London. In the autumn the choir will record a CD for issue on the Priory label. And Duley has himself achieved wider recognition through his recent appointment as chorus master of the RTE Philharmonic Choir.

Duley characterises the programme for the choir's concert at Christ Church tonight, as "exciting, with a hit of everything". He waxes particularly enthusiastic about Walton's Auden setting, The Twelve, calling it fantastic piece, with some of his best writing for choral forces". There's also Bach's Jesu, meine Freude, and works by Fayrfax, Byrd, Tallis, Stanford, Bruckner, and Josquin. And if there are any singers who would rather partake than observe, they might like to note that Duley is currently seeking to fill a number of vacancies.