Fiona and Ben

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Last Updated: 21 Aug 2007
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Inspiration:
Having been a chorister at Westminster Cathedral - choral music has always played an important part in my life. It is through choral music that I met my beautiful partner Fiona. Although most of my work is involved in the 'pop' world - we decided to 'dabble' into the classical world, Fiona having been a choral scholar at Trinity Cambridge.

I was recently commissed to write an 'In Paradisum' for my Uncle Peter's Requiem, a strange request, as he is very much still 'alive and kicking'!
However, this focussed me to re-visit my choral roots, and 'try out' Fiona's
voice, writing something that was able to make the most of her pure and tranquil sound.
The result encouraged us and according to my Uncle, has provided us 'a great reward in Heaven!'

We have now half an albums worth of material - and I'm trying to use some
of my 'pop' commercial head to try and bring this new material to a wider audience. Adverts, TV music etc - it's all a healthy way to get the music initially heard. [It worked for Karl Jenkins] After all, what is the point of music if no one hears it?

We both think that 'new music' is vital for the future of the arts- and would
love to take this project to the next level.
Like millions of others, I love Puccini's 'Nessun Dorma' a fantastic work- but does the world really need another version of this clogging up rack space in our already limited 'classical' shelf space? Forgive the politics, but next time you're in HMV have a look at the 'Classical Top 10' - and then see how much of it contains new material.

I hope our music is worthy of such a comment - I would love to think that one day, my compositions get criticised for being over used!
That would be a lovely problem to have.....

Thanks for listening,
Take care,

Ben.