Chapel Music
The University of Glasgow Chapel Choir and University Organist
The University of Glasgow Chapel Choir provides music for services and events in the chapel and elsewhere, as well as giving concerts and recitals throughout the academic year, such as the weekly "Choral Contemplations" series in the first and second terms. It also records and tours nationally and internationally, has recorded several CDs, and is available for weddings and memorial services.
There are thirty-two regular members (a mixture of volunteers, paid choral exhibitioners and professional lay clerks) plus around ten associate singers who join us for concerts and some other events. All are auditioned regularly and receive free singing tuition.
The choir is directed by Katy Lavinia Cooper (Director of Chapel Music) and accompanied by Kevin Bowyer (University Organist).
The Chapel Organ was built by Henry Willis III in 1927 and was most recently refurbished by Harrison & Harrison of Durham in 2005. Please see Chapel Organ Specification.
Simon Fisher Turner: In the Shadow of the Sun
Thinking Culture and Music in the University invite you to join composer Simon Fisher Turner for this special, one-off event screening and live score of Derek Jarman's In the Shadow of Sun.
School of Culture & Creative Arts | College of Arts & Humanities | Thinking Culture | Music in the University | Hunterian
Date: Friday 02 May 2025
Time: 19:00 - 21:00
Venue: University of Glasgow Concert Hall
Category: Ceremonial events, Concerts and music, Films and theatre
Speaker: Simon Fisher Turner
Simon Fisher Turner: In the Shadow of the Sun
Tickets: £10 / £5 concession.
The images of In the Shadow of the Sun are fused with scarlets, oranges and pinks. The degradation caused by the refilming of multiple images gives them a shimmering mystery / energy, like Monet’sNympheas, or haystacks in the sunset. There is no narrative in the film. The first viewers wracked their brains for a meaning instead of relaxing into the ambient tapestry of random images. The language is there and it is conveyed – and you don’t know what to say until you have said it. You can dream of lands far distant. (Derek Jarman, Dancing Ledge, 1984).
In the Shadow of the Sun has been described as Derek Jarman’s ‘Super 8 masterpiece’. It was assembled from a dozen different short films made c. 1972-74, including pieces such as Journey to Avebury and Fire Island, which Jarman cut together and superimposed to create a new work. The resulting film is a testament to his experimental boldness, his fondness for revisiting and reimagining past motifs, and to the intensity and brilliance of his vision. In 1981, the renowned group Throbbing Gristle created a new soundtrack for a screening of In the Shadow of the Sun at the Berlin Film Festival. Such transformations of Jarman’s film works through music have continued into recent times, with his frequent collaborator Simon Fisher Turner making a new score in 2021 for the version of My Very Beautiful Movie currently showing at The Hunterian Art Gallery as part of Digging in Another Time: Derek Jarman’s Modern Nature. He also devised new music for the live performance Blue Now, presented at Tramway in November last year as part of the exhibition programme. For this special, one-off event screening of In the Shadow of Sun, Turner will present new music to accompany a stretched version of the film. It is a unique opportunity to see and hear one of Jarman’s key artistic partners continue their creative dialogue.
To mark this occasion, The Hunterian has extended its opening hours so that visitors can see the exhibition before attending the concert.
In the Shadow of the Sun is screened with kind permission of James Mackay and LUMA Foundation.
This event is presented in partnership between Thinking Culture and Music in the University, in response to the Hunterian's exhibition, Digging in Another Time: Derek Jarman's Modern Nature.
Simon Fisher Turner
Composer Simon Fisher Turner is renowned for his film soundtrack work which started with Derek Jarman, for whom he scored many feature films - from Caravaggio (1986), through to Jarman’s final work Blue (1993). Caravaggio began a long relationship with the BFI, and more recently Fisher Turner composed the score for restorations of three silent films, Un Chant D’Amour dir. Jean Genet (1950), The Great White Silence dir. Herbert Ponting (1924) and The Epic of Everest dir. Captain John Noel (1924), winning a prestigious Ivor Novello Award for the soundtrack to The Epic of Everest. He has also composed film music for Mike Hodges, Michael Almareyda, Isao Yamada. His various collaborators over the years include Ruicki Sakamoto, Gina Birch, Deux Filles, The Derek Jarman Lab, and The Elysian Collective. With a career as varied and diverse as his current projects, Simon Fisher Turner began as a young actor in Tom Brown’s Schooldays, and in between then and now has released records under his own name and as The King Of Luxembourg and Deux Filles.
