_ This week the BBC features our new Francois Couperin recording as 'CD of the week'.  This is welcome recognition of the delight the recording will give to many who had never thought of themselves as afficionados of French baroque music.  Couperin's style is extremely accessible, and genial.  It will make excellent Christmas listening when you have tired of carols.  The CD also contains works never before recorded, and which are now performable through the reconstructions made by Edward Higginbottom, an expert in the field of French baroque music.  There are additional pluses to this release: the focus in the digipack on illustrations of College art treasures, and the musical focus on the young soloists of the choir, who sing this music with no less precision and style than seasoned professionals. 

Benjamin Bloor has won the UK round of the prestigious American Guild of Organists Quimby Competition for Young Organists under the age of 24. The next round is to be held in New Jersey, USA later in the year. The competition winner is awarded a substantial cash prize and a recital at the AGO National Convention in 2012. The AGO Quimby competition is held every two years and is made possible by the generous sponsorship of Michael Quimby, President of Quimby Pipe Organs.

Ben, a former pupil at Derby Grammar School, is currently organ scholar at St George's Chapel, Windsor. He will take up his organ scholarship at New College in October this year.

Former New College chorister Simon Halsey has been honoured with the prestigious Bundesverdienstkreuz 1. Klasse, Germany’s Order of Merit. This is in recognition of his outstanding services to choral music in Germany since being appointed Principal Conductor of the Rundfunkchor Berlin in 2001. He has not only positioned the Rundfunkchor Berlin as an internationally renowned and Grammy-winning chorus, but has also acted as an ambassador for choral music in Germany. With the projects in the series Broadening the Scope of Choral Music, and the Festival of Cultures he has revolutionised choral activity in Berlin. The Bundesverdienstkreuz (Officer's Cross) – Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany – is awarded for exceptional political, economic, cultural and intellectual achievements. Significant figures to have received this award include the musicians Karlheinz Stockhausen and Hildegard Knef, journalists Helmut Markwort and Peter Scholl-Latour, politician Gesine Schwan and the industrialist and humanitarian Oskar Schindler. It will be presented to Simon Halsey by State Cultural Secretary André Schmitz on 25 January 2011 in Berlin.

New College Choir has won a prestigious Gramophone award in the Early Music category for its recording on the French K617 label of music by the early 16th-century English composer Nicholas Ludford. The awards are international, covering a whole range of categories reviewed by the music magazine, and were presented at a spectacular ceremony at the Dorchester Hotel, London on 26th September.

Edward Higginbottom said: ”We are delighted at this news as the Gramophone awards are widely considered to be among the most prestigious in the recording industry. It’s particularly pleasing to get one of these since it recognises that choristers (aged 10-13) can sing as well as adults, and that also our academical clerks are the equal of “hardened’ professionals. It says much about the potential and capacity of the choral tradition and practice in Oxford that this level of success can be achieved.”