Exhibition 1: The Singers

From 2015 to 2023 we filmed over 300 musicians with a single consumer camera. We made our way into private spaces, our goal to document what musicians do best - playing live - but under a microscope.

This first collection brings together some of the resulting films from four particular groups. La Nuova Musica, with their immersion into early instrumental music with solo vocalists. The Choir of Clare College Cambridge, one of the world's best choirs. Voix Cabaret, an experiment into cabaret by opera singer Ilona Domnich. And the King's Singers, one of the world's most cherished and longstanding vocal harmony groups.

On April 8th, 2016, we were invited to a recording session in central London. The venue was a Catholic church in East Finchley, often used by London's classical record labels for its acoustic and quiet surroundings. The church itself is in the middle of a large array of leafy middle-class residential streets, and to look at it you wouldn't expect anything other than the occasional local religious service. Instead, the church has seen some of the finest classical music making in history.

This day was no different. Harmonia Mundi USA had organised the recording session, a recording of Pergolesi's masterpiece 'Stabat Mater' and two cantatas by J. S. Bach. The backbone of the music was provided by La Nuova Music, a group specialising in early music led by David Bates, and two soloists: countertenor Tim Mead and soprano Lucy Crowe.

We had come to know La Nuova Musica at the beginning of the Fly On The Wall project. In 2015, when toying with the idea of a film series, I contacted Harmonia Mundi owner Robina Young who had been my producer as a guitarist back in 2010. She had opened the door to a HM session in London recording La Nuova Music and Lucy Crowe, which we filmed and shared online. Over the following year we had also forged close links with the agency Intermusica, whose artists we had helped to promote on Classic FM. Tim Mead was signed with them. So when the next recording project came up in 2016, Tim's management invited us to capture a moment for our online series.

The schedule was tight, but we asked the artists for our own short session: 30 minutes or so after the label had finished its recording day in the early afternoon.

The first work in this collection is the second one we filmed that session: the opening aria from J. S. Bach's Cantata BMV 170. The album recording of this movement had already taken place during the morning, with every corner of the work perfected and recorded in small sections. So we asked for one complete performance. We put up three small spotlights in the background and took out our one single 50mm lens to shoot on our Canon 5D handheld photo camera. Tim was the focus, but as soon as the music began, we realised there was a unexpected soloist. While we watched Tim as he awaited his entry, the sound of the oboe captured our attention, and our eye began to wander between the two. In the background, two agents from Intermusica watch and listen quietly, a striking contrast to the usual formality of the concert scenario.

The second film in the collection is the first film made that day. Upon arrival at the venue, we needed to wait for the recording session to finish. Watching through the windows of the front door of the church, this was the scene we saw: the movements between the musicians, the sound blocked by the window. In particular the conducting of David Bates. The musicians instead had their backs to us and the soloists - far left and right in the shot - were hidden to us at the rear of the scene.

We decided to capture the scene as it stood. We watched David as he communicated with the group. And from the corner of each eye, we spied the duo of voices.

David whispers to the group before they begin: "Now, remember, this is very, very sad..." An understandable understatement perhaps, for a hymn describing the suffering of the Virgin Mary as she watches her son - the Son of God - crucified before her eyes.

But this is not the only sadness. The piece was written by the young Pergolesi during the final year of his life, commissioned by a Neapolitan confraternity dedicated to the veneration of the Virgin Mary. The composer, aged just 26 and famous only in Naples and Rome at the time, penned the work from the sanctuary of a Franciscan monastery while suffering from tuberculosis. In death Pergolesi would come to be known as one of the most important composers of the Baroque. And this work, a requiem to his short life.

This film captures the moment when one group of musicians gathered in shared purpose to keep this music - and its meaning - alive today.

On June 15, 2015 we went to a small church in Gospel Oak, North London, to watch a choir perform. The group is the Choir of Clare College Cambridge, led by Graham Ross. The piece, Lassus' Easter hymn Aurora Lucis Rutilat.

We had started the Fly On The Wall project just months before; this would be only our ninth video. But I had known Graham when we were both undergraduates at university. He was a member of the choir himself, I was a guitarist who became involved with the choir recording some new works with John Rutter. Now, years later, we reconnected when Graham took over the role of Director of Music. Graham told me about his multi-album project to record a resource of music for the church year, with the next volume to focus on music specifically for Easter Day. He agreed to let us attend to capture a moment from the choir's session.

Aurora Lucis Rutilat is the text of an early Latin hymn, originally written around the 3rd century. Used and revised throughout the history of the church, it was set in this version by Lassus in 1592. The text itself celebrates the resurrection of Christ, in particular focussing on the ideas of rebirth, renewal and the subjugation of Hell.

The choir is made up of students, 18-21 years old. With exams now over they had coached down to the bottom edge of Hampstead Heath for the recording. Away from the formality of their Cambridge traditions, and the daily term-time demands of choral evensong, the scene had an atmosphere almost of a school field-trip - brightly coloured clothes and animated conversations filled the sun-lit room.

But as the break comes to a close, we see the choir switch modes. A intense and studious focus comes to the fore. A sense of unity from a group attuned to each other by their daily performances.

We set the camera rolling to capture this one final performance of the day.

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The dawn gleams with light,
the heavens resound with praise,
the exulting world rejoices,
groaning hell howls.

When that most mighty King,
having broken the laws of death,
now victor over hell,
returns to the Father's throne.

His tomb, marked by many
a guard, was sealed,
yet Life bore death,
and, as the avenger of death, He rose.

Then to the thirty-three
apostles Christ showed Himself,
the victorious Redeemer,
Lord over human affairs.

The gates of hell unbarred,
triumphing as Victor, He entered
Paradise in glory,
those whom the unclean earth had borne.

That the new people of God
might always rejoice in new joys—
this is the sign
of the immortal King's eternal glory.

You now, O Redeemer, we implore,
that our voices may be joined
to the heavenly hymns,
and that You free us from death.

To God the Father be glory,
and to the Son, who rose
from the dead, and to the Paraclete,
through everlasting ages. Amen.

In March 2019, singer Ilona Domnich approached us about a show she had planned. Ilona is a lyric soprano, most comfortable on the operatic stage. She told us how she was yearning to experiment with something new, a different way to explore her musical identity. And that this had led her to plan a cabaret show in the autumn. She asked us if we would like to document some tracks from the show.

So on October 2nd, we headed out into the Hampshire countryside for the show. The venue was an old converted barn, Bury Court, where Ilona had performed many times. A community of passionate music fans had grown over the years, and the venue had become a staple of local cultural life.

The format for the show was simple: a singer, a piano and a double-bass - and two dancers who would accompany the show. The pianist Mark Risi is an experienced jazz musician, the bass-player Ian Marcus a gigging professional who doubles on flute. Ilona also teamed up with the choreographer Ewan Jones to design the show.

On seeing the scene, we decided that we wanted to capture two songs by Kurt Weill from the live performance, shot entirely handheld with just one camera. The atmosphere of the scene was paramount for the act, so we focussed on capturing this aspect of the performance.

The first film is of the song Mack the Knife, with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht. Written for their Threepenny Opera, the song wasn't a part of the original but written last-minute on the insistence of the lead actor who felt their character needed introduction. It became cemented in popular culture with recordings by Louis Armstrong and Marc Blitzstein.

The second film of the Bury Court set features the song Speak Low with lyrics by Ogden Nash. The piece was first introduced as part of the 1943 musical One Touch of Venus. It was immediately became a hit, quickly cementing its permanent place as a jazz standard.

On 21st November 2018, the King's Singers reached out to us via their new UK agent. The group is one of the world's best known cappella groups, with two Grammy Awards and an Emmy award to its name. They told us they had seen our Fly On The Wall series and asked if we'd be interested to capture a portrait of their group.

The first two films presented here were private, uncut sessions shot in London's Temple Church. We wanted to capture the group authentically and microscopically. Initially we had thought to attend one of the hundreds of concerts they performed each year. But while discussing the idea, we learned that the group was undergoing a key moment, with two new members joining the group. They explained to us how the line-up changed intermittently, keeping the group - founded in 1955 - alive, both literally and figuratively. And with each change, an intense period of renewal and regeneration would take place. We wanted to document this moment of fresh, focussed performance in the privacy of a familiar closed venue.

So on 22nd March, 2019 we headed to central London to the church, hidden just a stone's throw from the Thames amongst the law courts and barristers' chambers. The church itself is a historic London location, home of the Knights Templar since the 12th Century and a symbol of the power and prestige of what was essentially the West's first multi-national corporation. And a venue with both deep links to Oxbridge and the English choral tradition, as well as a relationship with the Kings Singers for over 50 years.

The track presented in this first film is an arrangement by Pat (the group's first countertenor) of country-singer Katie Musgrave's Rainbow. The song, a description of the mental-health struggles of a young mother, had been released as a single and performed at the Grammy Awards just one month before our session.

The Rose, by Amanda McBroom, is the second track we filmed that same day. When we met the King's Singers, they had just left the recording studio, working on an audio album for Signum Records. The release was part of a multi-album project spanning a decade to record the complete catalogue of the group since its inception in 1955.

With two new members of the group, the project had been a perfect opportunity to intensely focus on a key selection of Kings Singers repertoire. Since being shared online on October 22, 2019 it has been viewed nearly 3 million times.

On October 18, 2021 we were invited back to visit the King's Singers, this time during recording. The album was a new volume in their project to record the complete King's Singers catalogue.

Three years before we had filmed a set of private portraits in London. Now, in the studio setting, the scene was already set. A pianist - Pat's brother - and a double bassist had joined the group for Harold Arlen's Something Over The Rainbow.

The recording took place at the Britten Studio, a new development at Snape Maltings of a previously-derelict industrial building. The complex is a hugely popular location for classical music, the home of Benjamin Britten's Aldeburgh Festival which he founded in 1948. The venue itself was created in the 1960s and immediately became a focal point for cultural life.

When we arrived, the sessions had been in full flow for two days. Differently from most of our work over the previous 6 years, we wanted to create a film that captured the session, not just a snapshot. With the single camera, we stayed with the musicians for an hour. And silently we filmed.

The final clip presented here is composer Cy Coleman and lyricist Dorothy Fields' Rhythm of Life. The version performed by the King's Singers is an arrangement by Peter Knight.