Christmas is a special season for our organist emerita Dr June Nixon AM. Her thoughtful settings of Christmas carols are not only part of our own Cathedral choir repertoire, who first performed them, but have been favourites the world over.
Her radiant setting of the Advent Matins Responsory, I look from afar, was centrepiece of this year’s Advent Carol service at the National Cathedral St Peter and Paul in Washington DC, sung by the Cathedral’s mixed choir of boys and girls voices. Later this year, the choir of boys and lay clerks at King’s College Cambridge will be singing her setting of ‘The Holly and the Ivy’ as part of their world-famous Festival of Lessons and Carols.
June told us:
‘To have “The Holly and the Ivy” sung at King’s (for the third time!) this year was an enormous surprise, then to hear my Advent Responsories sung in Washington National Cathedral last Sunday has been the icing on the cake. And our own Trinity College Choir are singing two of my carol settings next Sunday at their Nine Lessons, which they hope to record!’
Dr June Nixon AM, Organist Emertia
In addition to composing, she also teaches two of our former choristers, Assistant Organist Mark Slavec and winner of last year’s Premier’s Award for Organ, Kevin Wang.
This article was originally published in the December edition of Notes & News