King Charles Northern Ireland visit: The choir performing at St Anne's Cathedral service

The Priory Singers will be performing for King Charles at a ceremony at St Anne's Cathedral on Monday for the first visit of the new monarch.

The choir were a last minute addition to proceedings after the disbandment of St Anne's choir in June. Priory Singers were only informed of their involvement last Thursday and informed of the songs they will be performing on Friday.

They are joined by five guest singers from Northern Ireland Opera. The choir is conducted by Philip Bolton who received an MBE for Services to Music. He is Head of Music at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution.

He has been a member of the choir since it inception, but took up his role as Director of Music of the Priory Singers just last week. The former Director of Music Robert Thompson, another long-term member of the choir is also singing.

The choir was founded in 1986 by the late Dr Harry Grindle, a former Director of Music of Belfast Cathedral and an authority on Ireland cathedral music.

The choir has sung many week-long residencies in a wide variety of English cathedrals including Canterbury, Worcester, Gloucester, Hereford, Winchester, Salisbury, Ely and this year – for the second time, Lincoln.

The choir has members drawn from all walks of life including many teachers and heads of music from many of Northern Ireland’s largest schools and the wife of the Dean of Armagh Cathedral. The choir also has many church organists in its ranks as well as the conductors of other choirs, including Concentio Chamber Choir and The Armagh City Choir.

There are married couples, an engaged couple and a family of four singing in the choir today. One of the daughters, Rebecca Devlin – a pupil at Belfast’s Strathearn School – was recently a finalist in the ‘BBC Chorister of the Year’ competition.

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