Choral Evensong At New College Oxford

New College Choir is one of the glories of our musical heritage. William of Wykeham, who also founded Winchester College and rebuilt Windsor Castle for Edward III, was responsible for its creation, College and Choir. He provided for sixteen choristers and a dozen clerks to sing the daily office in his magnificent mediaeval chapel. This practice still continues within the context of today’s University life. Director of Music, Edward Higginbottom was keep to embrace webcasting technology as a means of making this tradition accessible to a wider audience and consulted with About Sound who were responsible for getting webcasting pioneers, St John’s College, Cambridge online.

The installation is based upon the same Servoreeler retractable microphone winches as those found in St John’s Cambridge, St Thomas’s New York and the Royal Northern College of Music. The beauty of this system is that microphones can be retracted out of view when not in use. Since there is no roof void in this particular chapel, it was fortunate that a ventilation hatch happens to be located at the optimum microphone deployment position so the space was modified to accommodate a pair of Servoreelers from which an array of DPA omni and Sennheiser directional microphones are suspended.

The microphones are controlled and powered over standard CAT5E Ethernet cable and terminate in the organ loft where a Sadie system records the multitrack audio output from the choral microphones along with a number of wireless channels for the spoken word element of the service. Services are routinely recorded and then selected for online distribution. On this occasion About Sound also consulted on the content delivery side of the project and the service is currently in the late stages of development and testing, pending an official launch later in the year.

Youtube video of the New College Oxford Servoreeler Installation