Ulysses Arts releases J A Monteiro Choral Music on 28 August 2026, with the Happenstance Singers conducted by Matthew Swann (UA260071). The album will include Monteiro's Limehouse Mass, And Ruth Said, Away in A Manger, and music from Seven Last Words.

Monteiro: Choral Music brings together a selection of sacred works by J A Monteiro. Rooted in the traditions of Anglican and Catholic choral music, these settings balance expressive harmonic writing with the practical demands of liturgical performance.

At the centre of the programme are selected movements from Seven Last Words, a setting of the final words of Christ on the cross. Each movement illuminates a different emotional character, from the tender compassion of Woman, behold your son, through the anguish of My God, why have you forsaken me?, to the sorrow of It is finished.

The album also includes the Limehouse Mass, written for the Church of Our Lady Immaculate & St Frederick, London: a compact setting for practical liturgical use. And Ruth said unfolds in long lyrical lines, while Away in a manger offers a gentle reimagining of the familiar carol.

Pre-order Monteiro: Choral Music from Qobuz

Joe Monteiro, who publishes as J.A. Monteiro, is a composer and arranger of choral music. His works have been recorded by the Ulysses Arts label. Two initial EPs, Limehouse Mass (2025) and Seven Last Words (2026), were released in preparation for this full album. Choral works include motets, Mass and psalm settings, and arrangements of hymns and carols. His organ work Ye Choirs of New Jerusalem was performed at Southwark Cathedral in 2024 and subsequently recorded.

He is Director of Music at the Church of Our Lady Immaculate & St Frederick, London. He graduated from the University of Oxford, where he wrote for the chapel choir of St Hugh’s College.

Happenstance Singers were formed in 2020 by their director, Matthew Swann, and a few like-minded friends who were seeking a high-quality choir in London with a distinctive warmth of tone, across a wide range of choral repertoire. They have performed a range of projects including Bach’s St John Passion, rarely-performed Flemish 16th-century polyphony including Richafort’s Requiem in Memoriam Josquin de Prez, contemporary classics including Eric Whitacre’s When David Heard and their highly popular Handel’s Messiah at the Kernel Brewery Tap Room. They also sing regularly for services at Westminster Abbey.

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English composers Herbert Howells (1892–1983), Stanley Bate (1911–1959) and Edwin York Bowen (1884–1961) offer a wealth of divergent influences illuminating the cultural shifts of the early twentieth century. Their choral, instrumental and orchestral music is well recorded, but their songs less so. This album reveals them to be fine song composers too and includes also one song by Edwin York Bowen’s song Philip. Except for Howells’s Peacock Pie, all the music here is released for the first time.

Timothy Salter writes:

‘I am fortunate to have known two of the three composers represented in this collection of songs. 

My first piano teacher arranged for me, aged about 16, to play to York Bowen. Following a first meeting I had piano lessons with him for a sadly brief time until his death in 1961. My memory of him is of a friendly and quite modest figure; by the time I met him his music had been out of fashion for many years. I sensed that our relationship, although of short duration, had a sympathetic quality lent to it by the fact that I too am a composer as well as a pianist. I recall showing him one of my compositions; his response included a remark that I might have difficulty in publishing it these days in the face of the current cultural climate of modernism, hard-edged and experimental as so much of it was.

York Bowen’s own music is in a rich harmonic language characterised by an overtly sensual appeal, and in his teaching, he demonstrated this sensibility too. He once told me with great enthusiasm of a recital to which he’d been recently, given by Walter Gieseking - another pianist-composer - who had played some music of Debussy. Bowen had been enraptured by Gieseking’s limpid playing of a descending cascade of notes, saying it was as if he’d shaken the notes out of his sleeve.  It’s an image that has stayed with me.  

My acquaintance with Howells was more tangential. I recall an early encounter: he was examining a cellist for whose performance I was playing the piano part, and he remarked on the piano playing with generosity. He and I both taught at the Royal College of Music, London; our times overlapped by a few years.  The subjects we taught were composition and what used to be called harmony and counterpoint (later amended to ‘musicianship’ - more elegant but less informative).  Not long after I started to stand in at RCM for absent professors, I was called upon to deputise for him; he had attempted to board a No. 9 bus and fallen, breaking his leg. Thus, I met all his students but my contact with Howells was mostly a matter of amiable exchanges in the corridor thereafter.  

It’s tempting to consider the coinciding of composer and keyboard player.  Its immediate evidence is in the fluency of the keyboard writing throughout this recording; the musical language, of course, remains individual to each composer.’  T.S.
   

Herbert Howells (1892-1983)

Five Songs for Low Voice and Piano, Op. 7a *

1. The Valley of Silence
2. When the dew is falling
3. By the Grey Stone
4. St. Bride’s Song
5. When there is Peace

Peacock Pie, Op. 33

6. Tired Tim
7. Alas, Alack!
8. Mrs. MacQueen
9. The Dunce
10. Full Moon
11. Miss T. 

Stanley Bate (1911-1959)

Five Songs from Pomes Penyeach, Op. 53 *

12. Simples (No. 10)
13. Tutto è Sciolto (No. 8)
14. Watching the Needleboats at San Sabba (No. 4)
15. Bahnhofstrasse (No. 11)
16. Tilly (No. 1)

Edwin York Bowen (1884-1961) *

17. Cordovan Love Song, Op. 68 No. 4
18. To Myra
19. In June, Op. 68 No. 3
20. Storm Song, Op. 68 No. 1
21. The Hidden Treasure, Op. 67 No. 1
22. A Moonlight Night
23. Love's Reckoning, Op. 67 No. 3
24. Sleep: A Song Triptych (attributed to Philip York Bowen, 1913-1970)
25. If You Should Frown, Op. 68 No. 2
26. Love and Death, Op. 62 No. 2
27. The Wind's an Old Woman, Op. 71 No. 1

World première recordings *

Herbert Howells (1892-1983), Five Songs for Low Voice and Piano Op. 7a and Peacock Pie, Op. 33
 
Howell’s Five Songs for Low Voice and Piano date from 1916, when he was beginning to get the first professional performances in London after his studies in London at the Royal College of Music, where he had been hailed by Sir Hubert Parry, the director, at his audition as ‘an amazingly gifted boy’. Unlike his contemporaries Butterworth, Bliss and Gurney, serious illness spared Howells from serving in World War One: instead, he endured years of experimental and ultimately successful radiological treatment for Graves Disease, enabling him to continue to compose.

The Five Songs explore musical language reminiscent of late Wagner or Hugo Wolf’s Lieder in their complex harmonies and expressive intensity. Howells designated the Songs as Op. 7: he applied the same number to his Three Dances for Violin from 1915 and appears to have neglected if not suppressed the songs. While Howells never explained why he did this, like many of his contemporaries, he was searching for new musical styles unburdened by the late Romanticism embodied in the works of established composers such as Stanford, Parry and Elgar. In 1916, Howells expressed in The Athenaeum his opinion about the superfluous nature of musical settings of highly lyrical poetry. The words for these songs are by ‘Fiona Macleod’, a pseudonym for William Sharp (1855-1905).
 
Howells’s setting of six poems from Walter de la Mare’s Peacock Pie (1922) contrast strikingly with Op. 7a. The verses are addressed to children: the music has a direct simplicity, although the fifth song, Full Moon, reveals the lyricism found throughout his music.

* ‘English Singing’, The Athenaeum (July 1916), pp. 351-52.

Stanley Bate (1911-1959), Five Songs from Pomes Penyeach, Op. 53

Stanley Bate had a successful career as composer and pianist in America and Britain, although his work is little heard today. His strongest influences were Delius and near-contemporary European composers Ravel and Hindemith: he studied at the Royal College of Music with Ralph Vaughan Williams, Arthur Benjamin, Gordon Jacob and with Hindemith in Berlin. These five songs were published by Ricordi in 1951 from a set of thirteen composed in autumn 1946 setting words from James Joyce’s Pomes Penyeach. The fourth, Bahnhofstrasse, with its mechanistic piano figure, is far from the Romantic language of early Howells and Bowen. The poem’s reference to colours relates to Joyce’s own difficulties with vision.

On publication, the critic Harry Dexter praised these five songs for their ‘clarity of texture, sincerity of expression, general sense of purpose and their emotional substance which make for ready understanding and should be taken up by all singers of serious intentions.’ They were first performed by John Cameron and Frederick Stone on 20 October 1952. In the same year, Bate created a version of the songs for voice and orchestra.

Edwin York Bowen (1884-1961)

Edwin York Bowen was hailed by Camille Saint-Saëns as ‘the most remarkable of the young British composers’ and a distinguished pianist. During recent decades his piano music has become widely performed along with some of his chamber music. Most of his other works including the songs have remained largely unknown. 

Bowen’s instrumental music’s subtle chromatic harmonic palette and predominantly melodic language display a late Romantic sensibility; the harmonic language of his songs is more direct, manifesting a keen response to their texts.  They were published during the 1920s, except for Sleep (1937), which the score’s title page attributes to Bowen’s son Philip.

Engineering and production: Frank Morgan for Usk Recordings
Digital editing and mastering: David Wright
Artwork design: Hannah Whale - Fruition Creative Concepts
Record label and distribution: Ulysses Arts Ltd.

Ulysses Arts releases Poetry & Prayer, new choral music by Sarah Cattley, Phillip Cooke, Benedict Preece, Eoghan Desmond, Luke Mayernik, Neil Wright and Conner McCain on 5 June 2026, performed by Caritas Chamber Choir directed by Benedict Preece (UA260060).

Track List

Sarah Cattley, Ave Maria (IG/Single: 8 May)
Phillip Cooke, God be in my head (IG: 29 May 29)
Luke Mayernik, Vigil- Mary, the Dawn (IG/Single: 15 May)
Sarah Cattley, The lark's in the sky, love
Sarah Cattley, My heart is like a singing bird
Phillip Cooke, Everyone Sang
Benedict Preece, With Prayer and Supplication
Benedict Preece, Ave, Maris Stella (IG: 1 May)
Eoghan Desmond, Aestimatus Sum (IG/Sing;le: 22 May)
Eoghan Desmond, The Wayfaring Stranger
Phillip Cooke, Tota Pulchra Es
Conner McCain, You are Beautiful

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Benedict Preece writes:

'One of the great joys of directing Caritas over the years has been the choir’s unwavering commitment to performing, commissioning, and recording contemporary music. It is therefore a particular pleasure to present this album, devoted entirely to recent works - eleven of the thirteen receiving their first recording here.

The theme of poetry and prayer has given us the freedom to place sacred and secular music side by side. In truth, the boundaries are often porous: many of the sacred works draw upon deeply poetic texts - including two settings from the Song of Songs - while several of the secular pieces resonate with a spirit of contemplation not far removed from prayer. Alongside composers with whom we have an established artistic relationship, this album also marks our first collaborations with Eoghan Desmond, Luke Mayernik, and Conner McCain.'

The recording was made in All Saints’ Church, Boughton Aluph, Kent (pictured), returning to the church in which our first album was recorded in 2017.

Benedict Preece is an award-winning conductor who trained at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He is currently Music Director of Caritas Chamber Choir, East Bridge Chorale and Graduati Singers in London. Passionate about working with both singers and instrumentalists, he is also in demand as an orchestral conductor. He was Genesis Sixteen Conducting Scholar 2017-18.

He developed his orchestral conducting with Stephen Portman (a former student of Monteux and Szell) and with Peter Stark, with recent conducting engagements with the Festival Chamber Orchestra and Kent Sinfonia. As the Genesis Sixteen Conducting Scholar, he studied with Eamonn Dougan and Harry Christophers and with Nicholas Chalmers at the Royal Academy of Music. Benedict graduated from the RAM with an MA with Distinction, the DipRAM, the Regency Award for high achievement and the Exam Board Prize for the highest final recital mark.

He began his career as a Chorister of Canterbury Cathedral singing for many years as a tenor. At Trinity College of Music, London, he specialised in horn and natural horn under Roger Montgomery and Anthony Halstead. As an organist, Benedict studied with Dr. David Ponsford, David Flood, then organ and composition with Neil Wright. For ten years he was Music Director of Sandwich Concert Band and has held numerous church music positions. For more than five years, he was Head of Chapel Music, Head of Keyboard and Organist at The Duke of York’s Royal Military School.

He has released many recordings to critical acclaim with Caritas Chamber Choir. Ritmo magazine described his conducting: “Preece is very convincing…he always knows which voice to bring out, how to accentuate the beauty of the phrase.” Benedict is a signed artist with Ulysses Arts, a London-based record label, as both a conductor and organist. His choral compositions are regularly performed on both sides of the Atlantic and often featured on Caritas Chamber Choir recordings. He is passionate about contemporary music having commissioned composers including Sarah Cattley and has conducted première recordings of works by leading composers such as Sir James MacMillan, Cecilia McDowall, Gabriel Jackson, Phillip Cooke and David Conte. He is looking forward to bringing more brand new works to audiences around the world.

Caritas Chamber Choir was founded in 2011 by Benedict Preece, its Music Director. Caritas is the Latin word for charity and through its performances, the ensemble raises funds for charities, good causes and churches. Members are drawn from around Kent, in south east England. The ensemble has become an important part of the cultural landscape of Kent and is renowned for its commitment to contemporary choral works.

Caritas have many international collaborations and have performed in Sweden, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands. Every year, the choir proudly sings in Lille Cathedral as part of their summer music festival. For three years the choir ran an international choral composition competition and continues to champion new music with Sarah Cattley as the choir’s Associate Composer.

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