In the Bleak Midwinter

Info & track listings

St Mary’s Cathedral is the only cathedral in Scotland to maintain a fully choral foundation, singing daily services as in English cathedrals, and similar in size to the foundations which existed at the medieval Cathedral of St Andrews and the Chapel of Holyrood before the Reformation.

The choir consists of 18 treble choristers, boys and girls (the first cathedral in the British Isles to offer scholarships to girls as well as to boys), and 12 lay clerks. The choristers receive scholarships to attend St Mary’s Music School, the only choir school in Scotland; some of the lay clerks hold choral scholarships at Edinburgh University.

The Master of the Music, Timothy Byram-Wigfield, received his first music training as a chorister at King’s College, Cambridge, and studied at Oundle School and the Royal College of Music before being appointed organ scholar at Christ Church, Oxford. In 1985 he took up the post of Sub Organist at Winchester Cathedral, then came to Edinburgh in 1991 at the age of only 27.