SETTLE-based singing group Octameron were delighted to be invited to sing in York Minster recently.

Last year they performed the premiere of Sings Her Blessings, a song written especially for them by Emily Crossland of York University.

Emily was so pleased with the first performance of her work that she invited Octameron to take part in one of the university’s York concerts in the Minster.

The piece combines the marriage blessing from Shakespeare’s The Tempest with an old Javanese poem used in wedding ceremonies, set to music which evokes the traditional Javanese gamelan.

It was written to celebrate the marriage of Tom Emmett and Mary Hartley, the daughter of one of Octameron’s sopranos, and the group were pleased that Tom and Mary were in the audience to hear ‘their’ song.