What we sing

‘Lift Your Voice’ gathers thirteen of the songs the choir is asked for most often — among them I Sings, Bridge Over Troubled Water, Joyful Joyful and I Can’t Wait To Meet Chu. It is the record of a set that has been shaped over more than a decade of Sunday evenings rather than written in a studio: traditional gospel standards sitting beside contemporary songs given a gospel treatment, arranged for forty voices and a six-piece band.

The two earlier records were both made in front of an audience. One Love was taped in concert at the O’Reilly Hall in Belvedere College in November 2002, when the choir was barely two years old; On Air came six years later, recorded by RTÉ at a special performance in the Dóchas Centre at Mountjoy. Between them they show how the sound filled out as the choir grew.

The easiest way to hear any of it as it is meant to be heard is still the weekly Gospel Mass in St. Francis Xavier Church on Gardiner Street Upper — Sundays at 7.30pm from September to June. CDs are on sale at the church shop, and the studio album is on the usual streaming services.