Cathedral Choir today...
The Choir is made up of a team of twenty boys, a team of twenty girls, five Lay-Clerks, and seven Choral Scholars who are students at the University. The boys and girls join the Choir at the age of eight or nine and are boarders at the Chorister School in the Cathedral precincts. The Choir is directed by the Master of Choristers and Organist, with a Sub-organist, an Assistant Organist and an Organ Scholar. The girls’ team joined the Choir in 2009, and from September 2010 has taken turns with the boys in singing services. Their lives and responsibilities are identical to those of the boys.
In addition to singing the daily services there are practices twice a day. Throughout the year the Choir also sings services in other churches across the Diocese, gives concerts in the Cathedral and regularly broadcasts on radio and television. Because of the high standard that they achieve they have been invited to tour, most recently to Versailles (twice), but also in the past to Brazil, Germany, Norway and the USA. They have made
several recordings and have sung with leading orchestras including the Northern Sinfonia and the BBC Philharmonic.
In 2009 the choir sang at the Bobby Robson memorial service where the deputy head chorister Liam Jones sang a duet with Katherine Jenkins. The service was shown live on news channels across the world. In the same month the top eight chorister boys sang with Sting at a concert in the Cathedral which was filmed for a DVD released in November 2009.