Note: This promotion has ended. To purchase this track and the full album, visit: www.orasingers.co.uk.
Track Name: In the stillness
Composer: Sally Beamish
Text: Katrina Shepherd
Duration: 2:01
Nationality: British
Sally Beamish initially trained as a viola player at the Royal Northern College of Music before moving to Scotland in 1990 to develop her career as a composer. Her music embraces many influences, particularly jazz and Scottish traditional music, in a catalogue boasting over 200 compositions.
The carol is called In the Stillness, and sets a poem by Scottish writer Katrina Shepherd, which came to Katrina one evening before Christmas as the first flakes of snow began to fall. Katrina gave Sally the poem at Stirling Writers' Group, of which they were both members, in 2007. As Sally had just been invited to write a carol for a collection to be published by composer Giles Swayne through his own publishing house, Gonzaga, she was delighted - it was perfect! It has been recorded several times - by choirs and smaller a cappella groups, and is included in the Music Book for the Queen.