Author: Abigail Shepherd

This year's Westbury Park Festival starts with a concert by Westbury Park School on Monday 29th June, wrapping with a festival service on July 5th, and then open gardens for the afternoon.  The week-long festival is packed, and includes a guided tour of the downs's trees, botanical gardens, a quiz night, an art exhibition, the big street party and a choir explosion in St Alban's for Only Choirs Aloud. Full details see the Westbury Park Festival website....

Our organist (and choir master) Nigel Walton celebrated 50 years as an organist at a special evensong on June 7th.  We were pleased to see so many people, including many who rarely (if ever) have heard evensong. The music, including Zadoc the Priest, Balfour Gardiner's Evening Hymn and Nigel's preferred responses, were of course chosen by Nigel. (more…)...

The first of two episodes of Songs of Praise shot in St Alban's was broadcast on Sunday 3rd May.  If you haven't watched it yet, you can still catch it online on the BBC website. To warn those not expecting it, the accompaniment is jazzy, which suits some of the hymns better than others. You can enjoy the ever-fun game of spotting people you know and seeing St Alban's in a different light.  To help you, here are some stills taken from BBC iPlayer. Unfortunately, the prayer that Emma so patiently recorded was cut from the final edit. The next episode, featuring the Exaltate singers, will be shown on Sunday 5th July. Update: More pictures of St. Alban's in Songs of Praise Post updated 11th May: new pictures, fixed dates....