The Choir of Royal Holloway features on i breathe, out on Signum Classics this Friday. The public is invited to a lunchtime launch concert in the university's Chapel in Egham on Wednesday 11 November.
Royal Holloway Chapel
Welsh composer Dr Nathan James Dearden, Associate Professor in Music Composition at Royal Holloway, University of London, releases his first choral album, i breathe, on Friday 6 November 2026. The album gathers fifteen pieces written over the past decade, six of them performed by the Choir of Royal Holloway
To mark the release, Royal Holloway is hosting a free lunchtime launch concert in its Chapel on Wednesday 11 November, from 1.15pm to 1.45pm.
i breathe is performed by three choirs that shaped Dearden's musical life: the Choir of Royal Holloway, where he has been Composer-in-Residence since 2021; the National Youth Choir of Wales, in which he sang as a teenager; and Kantos Chamber Choir.
The Royal Holloway recordings include Three Motets for choir and cello, a Presteigne Festival commission whose opening movement, Locus iste, was the album's first single. They also include suo, dedicated to Dearden's mother, which folds the traditional Welsh lullaby Suo Gân into hummed harmony, and two settings of the poet George Herbert.
Nathan said: "Pulling together this album made me notice the threads in my own language. Textures that envelop you like a hug. Simple moments of collective singing that pack a punch, the way those famed Welsh hymns I grew up with in the Valleys do. Ideas of ritual. Communities. What home means to us. The act of humans coming together. Our breath."
The album moves between the sacred and the everyday. Its title track, a meditation on landscape and stillness set to short poems by Ken Jones, Paul Chambers and Arwyn Evans, won Best Music Creator at the 2022 Making Music UK Awards. In 2024 Dearden won the Composer's Medal (Tlws y Cyfansoddwr) at the National Eisteddfod of Wales.
Created at the time of the foundation of Royal Holloway College in 1886, the Choir of Royal Holloway is made up of student choral scholars and is regarded as one of the finest university choirs in Britain. Its 2018 album Winter Songs reached number one in both the UK and US classical charts.
Nathan added: "i breathe is a decade of that living and learning. Recorded with the choirs who shaped me, and released with gratitude to every singer who taught me that music is never made alone."
i breathe was supported by PRS Foundation, the Hinrichsen Foundation, Royal Holloway, the Centre for AudioVisual Research and the Vaughan Williams Foundation, alongside a public crowdfunding appeal.
Album launch concert
When: Wednesday 11 November 2026, 1.15pm to 1.45pm
Where: The Chapel, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham Hill, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX
Admission: Free, find out more.
Listen: i breathe is out on 6 November on CD, streaming and download from Signum Classics
