Last week the Fron Male Voice Choir released the 6th in the Voices of the Valley series of albums, Voices of the Valley – Echoes, on the Silva Classics label.
The choir with humble beginnings that went on to become one of the most revered in the world, have launched their sixth studio album in time for St David’s Day.
Choir member, Roger Willimas said: “Echoes, like all the albums before was recorded in The Forge Studio in Oswestry, owned by Phil and Lucy Beaumont.
All-in-all the series has sold almost 2 million copies worldwide and has achieved silver, gold and platinum discs. The original Voices of the Valley album still holds the record as the fastest-selling classical album ever and the choir still features in Classic FM’s top 20 artists and top 20 most-requested music.
The new album features songs from musicals, opera, religious and pop repertoire, from composers from Verdi to Billy Joel, including Russian, Italian and, of course, Welsh songs.
The choir parts of the album were recorded in August 2019 and were taken away by the producer, Jon Cohen, to add in his orchestral arrangements. Unfortunately, by the time they were complete we were in lockdown so the launch was delayed in the hope that by the summer it would all be over. As we know this was not the case so we aimed for St David’s Day instead.
Jon Cohen and engineer, Al Unsworth, worked on all the Voices of the Valley series and have reputations for being the best in the business. Jon, in particular, has worked with many artists from the Fron to the Military Wives Choir, the Kingdom Choir and has 5 Number one classical/crossover albums, 23 Top five classical/crossover albums, and is a winner of a Classical Brits album of the year.
The Fron Choir was only beaten to a Classical Brit award by none other than Paul McCartney.”
The new album, ‘Voices of the Valley – Echoes’ is available from all the usual online outlets, Amazon, iTunes and, of course, www.fronchoir.com.
