This ‘songbook’ is unique to the choristers of Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum, now housed at Dean Close Preparatory School. ‘Essentially, it’s a showcase for the Abbey trebles,’ explains Director of Music Benjamin Nicholas. ‘I’ve always been keen to build each boy up as a soloist, not with the express idea of them singing lots of solos, but so that they can learn to sing in a soloistic way.’ This is evident above all in the already highly distinctive singing of 11-year-old Laurence Kilsby, whose gifts won him the BBC Chorister of the Year competition in 2009 and who features here in two Shelley settings by Roger Quilter, the Bach/Gounod Ave Maria and John Ireland’s sincerely felt Passiontide motet Ex ore innocentium.