The London Festival of Contemporary Church Music 2021 presents a Gala Concert to celebrate Cecilia McDowall at 70. This birthday celebration programme performed by the LFCCM’s own Festival Singers includes a selection of Cecilia’s unaccompanied choral works alongside...

On BBC Radio 3, Music Matters, Saturday, 3 April, Tom Service interviews Cecilia McDowall about the new Hyperion release of her sacred choral music sung by The Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, conductor Stephen Layton. The programme is at 11.45am and may be found...

The Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Works Collection recognises her exceptional body of classical works. In presenting the ‘Gift of the Academy’ award to Cecilia McDowall the Academy said that Cecilia is “a highly skilful and captivating composer who communicates...

Classic FM has chosen A Winter’s Night as its Album of the Week with Alexander Armstrong. McDowall’s Christmas cantata, A Winter’s Night is sung by the Winchester College Chapel Choir with Onyx Brass, Ben Cunningham, organ, conductor Howard Ionascu. Recorded on the...

The fifth programme in our A Choral Odyssey series explores the origins of the carol – in its earliest form it was a round dance, more secular than sacred. Mediaeval carols were for everyone from festivities in the town square or village green to celebrations in...

In March 1983, on her 29th birthday, the Russian poet, Irina Ratushinskaya, received a seven year prison sentence for expressing ‘anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda’ in her verse. Undaunted, she continued writing poems in prison, aware of the possibility of yet more...