Other Old Choristers' Associations
Dinner bookings close on 6th March and the hotel is not allowing bookings 'on the day'.
Some of our membership information is very out of date, so please share the booking link with any siblings/old friends you think might not have received booking information, regardless of whether you think they'll attend the reunion.
Programme of the day:
10.30 Practice in the Cathedral
11.30 Choral Eucharist: OCs join the Cathedral Choir
Mass: Missa Sancti Nicolai – Haydn
Anthem: Ave verum – Mawby
12.55 Cooked Lunch at the Chantry (£9 - book via the online form - or bring your own picnic)
14.00 Rehearsal in the Cathedral
15.00 Evensong: OCs join the Cathedral Choir to sing:
Introit: Hail, gladdening light – Wood
Canticles: The Gloucester Service – Howells
Anthem: Blessed city, heavenly salem – Bairstow
16.00 Reception in the South Transept
17.00 ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING (Chapter House)
All welcome - come and get involved in the running of your Association
19.00 for 19.30 Dinner at Mercure Southgate Hotel, Southernhay East, EX1 1QF
Note - The hotel requires Dinner Bookings to close on 6th March. No bookings 'on the day' are possible.
Instead of usual concert formal seating, the audience is invited to bring cushions, camping chairs, rugs etc to sit wherever they wish and are encouraged to follow the choir around the building as pieces are performed in different locations.
(photo: Exeter Cathedral Marketing Department, Candlelight Concert 2025)
3rd and 4th February
Exeter Cathedral hosted the Northern European Cathedrals Conference, Tuesday 3rd February to Friday 6th February. The start of the conference was marked by the BBC recording the opening service, to be broadcast on Radio 4, Sunday Worship 8th February, 8.10 a.m. The photo is of the recording underway at that service (photo: Exeter Cathedral Life 6.2.2026)
Evensong the following day was broadcast live on Radio 3, to be repeated Sunday 8th February. The service featured The Panther – an anthem inspired by the Exeter Book and specially commissioned for the Northern European Cathedrals Conference from the American composer Nico Muhly.
More details about the services.
Eight new choristers were installed during evensong on Sunday, 11th January. The service was followed by a reception and splendid celebratory cake (made by Madeleine Shaw, chorister mother and brother of former chorister Ben Shaw, whom ECOCA members from the early 1980s will remember).
Arabella, Arthur, Heidi, Katica, Laurence, Lucia, Rhian and Rupert were duly welcomed "as Choristers of this Cathedral Church".
Music:
Responses: Smith
Psalms 46 and 47
Mag and Nunc: St Paul's Service - Herbert Howells
Anthem: When Jesus, our Lord - Felix Medelssohn
Voluntary: Carillon-Sortie - Henri Mulet
A new addition to this website is the memoirs of Denis Vercoe, who was a chorister at Exeter between about 1925 and 1928. His time at Exeter included singing on the first LP recording the choir ever made. He was one of the choristers shown in the photo below, carrying the bride's train at the wedding of the Dean's daughter in 1928. His chorister-world was very different from today!
The current choir's Exeter Cathedral Choir Association has an essential aim of raising money for enrichment activities for the choristers and to help fund choir tours. You can support this at no cost to you, by simply doing your online shopping using 'Easyfunding'
https://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/exetercathedralchoirassoc/
Over £1,500 has been raised so far this way!