Joan Ishibashi and I made the two-hour train trip to the city of Gloucester from London’s Paddington Station. I can’t believe it has been three years since I came to Gloucester for my first Three Choirs Festival!

This time, though, we were here because of the residency of the Duke University Choir at Gloucester, where they will sing Evensong every night this week. Last Sunday they were at St. Martin in the Fields, and this Sunday they will return to London to sing at Westminster Abbey.

The real draw, of course, was to see and hear my former student, Joey Fala, who is the Organ Scholar with the Duke University Choir. We had a brief reunion and tour through the Cathedral before the 5:30 pm service, then went to a nearby tea shop for afternoon refreshments.

Joan and I got back to the Cathedral as the Choir was rehearsing and I took this video snippet of their lovely singing in this reverberant space.

Three years ago, I wrote a post, “The building and the music,” in which I wrote:

… I mentioned the fan-vaulted ceiling and how it encourages the sound to grow. I was speaking to another concertgoer tonight and she said she had heard the Philharmonia orchestra, which is performing all week here, in a concert hall venue and they sounded different from the way they are sounding in Gloucester Cathedral. The sound of the orchestra and choir is absolutely fantastic in these Cathedral acoustics—which definitely has more reverberation than the typical concert hall. The reverberant acoustics provide a wonderful “cushion” on which to make music.

Joey and I spoke about the lack of any similar buildings in Hawaii which compare with the fantastic acoustics of European cathedrals, and how much our American choirs revel in singing here.

Joey was in charge of assembling all the choral music for the choir into a 350-page PDF, and I asked whether anyone would be reading from a tablet instead of a paper printout, and the answer was “no,” because the director didn’t think it appropriate in a Gothic cathedral! True, but it was a lot of paper to pack!

The Duke choir opened with a pristine rendition of William Harris’ “Bring us, O Lord God,” and it was so perfect and beautiful that I thought I surely must have died and gone to heaven! I posted this on Facebook, and Edith Ho (from Church of the Advent Boston) commented, “Did you see Carl?”—referring to my late husband!

I absolutely loved the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis by Gabriel Jackson but the real “tour de force” was the choir’s anthem, “The Twelve” by William Walton, which was challenging for both choir and organist. Joey played magnificently, and just take a listen to the postlude he improvised on the closing hymn, “I heard the voice of Jesus say” on the tune KINGSFOLD.

We three went out to dinner in a lovely courtyard restaurant, The Fountain Inn, before Joan and I had to walk back to the rail station to catch our train back to London.

It was a lovely day, the weather was not so hot in Gloucester and the best part was hearing Joey play the organ so masterfully.

Wow, Joey, you make us proud!