News from Belfast

[Caussade]

https://www.belfastcathedral.org/news/director-of-music-belfast-cathedral?fbclid=IwAR0_DlUShPKAps0HfUiLSHRaa8kSH8EKGMYFWxnPGZF3pyW00ne9B1z-Y_g

[W.Kearns]

What sad news.

[jonfan]

This is awful. The announcement is terse and perfunctory so things must be very bad. The same notice has a job advert for a part time sexton.

[ardcarp]

One wonders why Matthew Owens who has been O&C of Wells Cathedral (and director of the Exon Singers*) should have wanted to go to Belfast in the first place. Hardly a step up, if Belfast will excuse my saying so. I trust Matthew will quickly find another appointment. That a British Cathedral should not have a paid DoM is appalling. What's going on?

*I sang with them under his direction a couple of times.

[Vox Humana]

What's going on?

They're killing the goose that lays the golden egg. OTOH, if you don't market the egg I suppose you might as well eat the goose. What is it with the CofE and music? The Episcopal Church in America invests in professional DoMs and wherever I've been the churches are vibrantly healthy and the music excellent. Whereas in England the church began dumbing down the music in the 60s in order to chase popularity and 'relevance' with absolutely zero effect (apart from those relatively few places that really went the whole hog, such as HTB).

Yet this offers a ray of hope: https://www.churchofengland.org/medi...eid=87189b65be
I hope the CofE allows the initiative the best chance of succeeding by investing properly professional musicians with the right skills.

I'm sure Matthew Owens will be snapped up pretty smartly by some cathedral (assuming that he wants to stay in that line of music of course).

[cat]

I had a quick look at their accounts, it seems they've been spending more than they receive for years, so this was inevitable unless they had some secret fundraising plan that failed.