In June, Donald Nally and The Crossing spent five days recording all the (ofter ferociously difficult!) pieces I’ve written for them over the years in a wonderful acoustic space in rural Pennsylvania.  The rccording will be released by Navona Records in Atumn 2025.

The following month saw the first three sessions for a Resonus Classics disc of recent choral and organ pieces. Canterbury Cathedral Choir was conducted by David Newsholme with organist Jamie Rogers and saxophonist Sam Corkin. Works recorded include Praise Ye The Lord, written for the 10th Anniversary of Canterbury’s Girl Choristers and Ave Maris stella for choir and alto saxophone which combined the medieval Latin text with a modern poem by the Latvian Anna Rancāne. The disc with will be completed with further sessions in October.

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Released on Ulysses Arts on 6 October, the new album All shall be Amen  from the Kent-based Caritas Chamber Choir  features premiere recordings of four of my works, including the title track of the album.

On 8 September Palimpsest, a collection of re-imaginings of existing pieces by 15 different composers, will be released by Signum Classics. Performed by saxophonist Sam Corkin and Canterbury Cathedral Choir, my contribution is Sancte Deus, a palipmsest of the Jesus Antiphon of the same name by Thomas Tallis who, like me, sang in Canterbury Cathedral Choir in his youth.

The end of January 2024 will see the first perfomance of Praise ye the Lord, commissioned to celebrate the 10th anniversary of girl choristers joining Canterbury Cathedral Choir and will be the centrepiece of a new album of my work, to be recorded next summer.

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Newly released on Open G Records, the debut album from the brilliant Phildelphia vocal sextet Variant 6 includes the premiere recordings of Zero Point Reflection (commissioned by Juice Vocal Ensemble) and Spring (commissioned by EXAUDI for the Michael Tippett centenary).

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The World Imagined, a 45-minute oratorio commissioned by the Three Choirs Festival and the Elgin Master Chorale will have its first performance in Worcester Cathedral on 27 July. Nick Pritchard is the tenor soloist, with the Three Choirs Festival Chorus and the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by David Hill. 

The US premiere will be in Spring 2022.

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At Latvia’s annual music recording ‘Golden Microphone‘ awards, the Classical or Choral prize for 2020 went to Youth Choir Kamēr… for Kalpotais. Blumbergs. Kamēr…  The first track on the album is my Blumbergs in Venice, commissioned by the choir in 2018.

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The Delphian Records recording of The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ has been shortlisted for a BBC Music Magazine Award in the choral category. Public voting ends on 16 February and the winners will be announced at a special ceremony on 22 April at King’s Place in London. 

The disc was also acclaimed as one of the best recordings of 2019 by Choir & Organ magazine, allmusic.com and MusicWeb International.

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I have been commissioned by the Three Choirs Festival and the Elgin Master Chorale to write a 45-minute piece for tenor, chorus and orchestra. The texts for this multi-movement piece are by Ha-Nagid, Leopardi, Doris Kareva, Walt Whitman, Kenneth White, St Ambrose and Wallace Stevens. The first performance will be given by Nick Pritchard, the Three Choirs Festival Chorus and the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by David Hill in Worcester Cathedral on 31 July 2020, with the US premiere in November 2021. 

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The Delphian recording of The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ continues to receive outstanding reviews. It was an ‘Editor’s Choice’ in the April edition of Gramophone magazine, who called it “…an effective, emotionally charged contemporary Passion…”. BBC Music Magazine named it ‘Choral and Song Choice’ in their May/June issue – “…an imaginative, moving and majestic telling of the Passion story that deserves the widest of audiences.” Musicweb described it as “a score of great importance” and “…a compelling, dramatic narrative and a deeply thoughtful series of reflections on the narrative…” while Classical Music Daily called it “Richly imaginative and strikingly coloured…a work of deep spirituality and profound dramatic impact that complements the ecstatic sorrow of the story within a well nigh perfect musical structure. ” For theArtsdesk.com, is was a “…very singable work, one which would take a hard heart not to love…” and Choir and Organ magazine called it “…modern, majestic and deeply moving…”, awarding it the maximum 5 stars in the March/April edition. And for AllMusic it is simply”…the most persuasive setting of the Passion to have appeared in many years.”

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Celebrating their 40th Anniversary this year, The Sixteen will include Ave Maria in their 2019 Choral Pilgrimage programme alongside works by James MacMillan, Eric Whitacre, John Tavener and several early Tudor masterpieces. The pilgrimage starts at King’s Place in London on 3 April and continues throughout the year with nearly thirty concerts in all. In advance of the first concert a new CD, An Enduring Voice, containing the entire Pilgrimage programme, will be released on 1 March.

Also available in March is the ORA Singers‘ new recording Desires, which includes I am the Rose of Sharon, originally written for Opus Anglicanum.

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On 29 March Delphian Records will release the premiere recording of The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Benjamin Nicholas conducts the Choir of Merton College, Oxford (who commissioned the piece for the Merton Choirbook), the Oxford Contemporary Sinfonia and soloists Emma Tring and Guy Cutting. In the first review of the new CD to be published, Choir and Organ magazine has described the work as “Quite unlike any Passion you’ve heard before…modern, majestic and deeply moving.” 

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To celebrate their bicentennial, St James’ Church, King Street in Sydney have commissioned a large-scale Mass (with Credo) for choir and chamber orchestra. The first performance will be in the summer of 2020

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Stabat mater, commissioned by The Marian Consort for their 10th anniversary, continues to receive outstanding reviews. The Church Times, writing about the first performance in Merton college Chapel, said ‘Jackson’s musical voice is so bold and fresh that it is essentially his own’ and that ‘Jackson’s great success is that he gives us these — the prolonged anguish and intermittent solace are both palpable — and yet he still manages to preserve an underlying consistency. He controls his material like a Renaissance master. It requires a fine art and meticulous skill to achieve that.’

Gramophone, reviewing the first recording on Delphian Records, wrote that ‘…this 20-minute setting is a major new work from Jackson and an unsettlingly powerful one’ and that ‘…this feels like a modern classic in the making, sensitive and endlessly responsive to the text.’

BBC Music Magazine wrote that ‘…the curvaceous vocal lines are compromised by anxious melisma, catching the febrility of the raw human emotions experienced by the onlookers’ and for Musicweb, ‘…Jackson’s setting of the great medieval poem is a very fine one indeed. As I’ve come to expect with this composer, he writes most imaginatively and sympathetically for the voices – ten singers are used here – and at every turn his music seems to complement and enhance the words marvellously.’ 

BBC radio 3’s Record Review called the Stabat mater ‘devastatingly beautiful’ and ‘a major new addition to the canon.’

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At the end of June, The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ was recorded at Merton College, Oxford. The Choir of Merton College, who commissioned the piece, were joined by 10 players of the Oxford Contemporary Sinfonia and soloists Emma Tring (soprano) and Guy Cutting (tenor). The recording will be released by Delphian Records in April 2019.

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The first track on the latest CD by the Marian consort, Music for the Queen of Heaven is my Salve Regina, written for Truro Cathedral Choir seventeen years ago. I have been commissioned to write an extended Stabat mater for the 10th anniversary of the Marian Consort; the first performance will be at Merton College, Oxford next Spring and the piece will be recorded by Delphian Records.

Also released this month is the 10th recording of The Christ-child, by the MDR Rundfunkchor under Philipp Ahmann.

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On 30 July Agnese Urka, Dārta Treija, Christopher Walsh and Eduards Fiskovičs will give the first performance of Exile Meditations at the Latvian National Railway Museum in Rīga.  The half-hour piece sets texts by four of the so-called ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ poets (Latvian post-war displaced persons who eventually settled in New York) and three present-day Middle Eastern refugee writers.

On 22 August Arvydas Kazlauskas and the State Choir “Latvija” under Māris Sirmais will premiere Ave maris stella (combining the medieval Latin hymn with a contemporary poem by Anna Rancāne) at St Gertrude Old Church in Rīga.

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New releases this Spring include the premiere recording of Our flags are wafting in hope and grief (with words by Doris Kareva about the Singing Revolution in the Baltic States) on the debut disc from new young choir Sansara; the Exon Singers‘ 50th Anniversary disc on new label Rubicon Classics features Ave Maria alongside other commissions for the choir; the Vancouver-based Phoenix Chamber Choir include Not no faceless Angel and the sixth recording of To Morning on their latest CD, and the Choir of the Queen’s College, Oxford, include Ecce venio cito on their Signum Records disc A new heaven.

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Vox Clara, released earlier this year on Regent Records, continues to garner excellent reviews. It was an ‘Editor’s choice’ in the November issue of Gramophone magazine, who called it ‘heart-stoppingly gorgeous’ and a ‘glorious release…unbeatable’. The Sunday Times wrote of ‘an irresistible allure’ and The Observer of ‘a stunning set of Advent Antiphons and a wonderfully lithe and sinuous Cantate Domino.’ Choir and Organ magazine called it ‘a refreshingly different disc’ and MusicWeb said ‘The disc is full of imaginatively crafted music which gives further evidence of why Gabriel Jackson is so highly regarded as a choral composer.‘  

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The brand-new Atomos Saxophone Quartet, based in Rīga, will include LM-7: Aquarius in their debut concerts in November. The first performance on their mini-tour of Latvia will be at the Valmiera Musuem on 15 November, followed by concerts at the New Castle in Cēsis on 16 November, Liepāja Museum on 17 November and Birojnīca in Rīga on 20 November. LM-7: Aquarius was commissioned by the Lunar Saxophone Quartet and first performed by them in 2006.

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Three new recordings are released this month. Untitled (for Robert Irvine), my contribution to cellist and very old friend Robert Irvine‘s Songs and Lullabies collection in aid of UNESCO is on Delphian. Nowell sing we, originally commissioned by Truro Cathedral Choir, is the title track of the second album from young American professional choir Brevitas. And The Sixteen, on their own label Coro, release the 9th commercial recording to date of The Christ-child.

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I am one of the first nine composers to receive a grant from the PRS Foundation‘s Composers Fund (in assoctaiona with the Esmeé Fairbairn Foundation). This will enable me to compose a substantial piece for alto saxophone, strings and percussion. Stone.Water.Sound. will have its premiere performances in Tallinn and Riga.

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