The Aylesbury High School Chamber Choir performed ‘Before’ by Reed & Caroline at their Music, Muses and Movement concert on Wednesday 27 June. The performance was the culmination of almost three months of planning and rehearsal by the choir.

When working on the promotional support for Reed & Caroline’s second VeryRecords album Hello Science, Reed Hays, Caroline Schutz, Vince Clarke and I kept coming back to the notion that ‘Before’ sounded a lot like a hymn because of its philosophical and spiritual quality. Caroline in particular said that performing that piece reminded her of the Christian hymns she sang at school, despite growing up Jewish. That got us thinking about asking a choir to perform the song, so I asked the music teacher at the girls’ high school in Aylesbury as to whether they’d be willing to support the promotion of Hello Science with a performance of the song, and they graciously consented.

‘Before’ is already a beautiful, moving, poignant piece of music. In the hands of the Aylesbury High School Chamber Choir the song takes on an entirely new level of poignancy, something which has reduced more than one of us who worked on this record to tears.

You can watch this very special, unique performance of ‘Before’ at the VeryRecords YouTube channel here.

Reed, Caroline, Vince and I are all incredibly grateful to Ms Raven, the Aylesbury High School Chamber Choir and the school’s headteacher Mr Rosen for giving us the loan of the choir for this wonderful performance.

Credits:
Arranged and conducted by Olivia Raven
Filming by Mat Smith and Seren Smith
Video editing by Vince Clarke
Sound mixing by Reed Hays
Performed at the Aylesbury High School Music, Muses and Movement evening performance, 27 June 2018

Hello Science can be ordered from the VeryRecords website.

(c) 2018 VeryRecords