Gabriel Jackson has made his name within the realms of vocal and church music, though he doesn’t like to be considered a ‘choral composer’. ‘No one calls Chopin a “piano composer”,’ he tells me. ‘I’m just a composer.’ His distinctive style is expressed through minimal harmonic and rhythmic movement with little dissonance. It’s melodically absorbing and sometimes complex, filled with ecstatic contrast and climax.

Jackson has a great interest in sacred texts and buildings, though doesn’t consider himself religious or theologically motivated. He writes music for the choral tradition – which means a lot to him, as he grew up in it. He was a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral under Allan Wicks, and there he discovered an interest in the organ. Wicks introduced the boys to the recent 20th-century sacred repertoire of Tippett, particularly his canticles, and Tudor Renaissance music.

While at St Edmunds School, Canterbury, Jackson attended the Junior Department of the Royal College of Music, London, studying with Richard Blackford. He then went on to the main college programme to study with Blackford’s former teacher John Lambert, his contemporaries there including Mark-Anthony Turnage.

It was shortly after graduating from the college that Jackson changed his writing style, realising that although he had been composing in a style that was in fashion at the time, it ‘wasn’t really me’. He moved from a post-war modernist musical language into a dedication to – in his words – ‘doing a hell of a lot with actually not very much’. A name that springs to mind in this area of sacred economism is Sir John Tavener, and Jackson acknowledges Tavener’s Orthodox Vigil Service (1984): ‘It was quite a big thing for me, encountering that.’

The late 1980s and ’90s saw Jackson delve into writing for solo piano, as well as beginning to write for choir, working in a broader, minimalist style. Works for piano include Angelorum (1987) for Thalia Myers and Edwards (1993) for Stephen Gutman (recorded for NMC). Other piano works are Memorial Blues (for Phyllis Hyman) (1995), commissioned by Myers and recorded for her ‘Spectrum’ album (also NMC). Although it precedes much of his best-known choral music, Jackson’s work for solo instruments maintains a songlike focus on melody and consists of structures not dissimilar to those of his later choral compositions.

Other instrumental collaborations came in the ’90s through his chamber-music writing, notably with the Brindisi Quartet for his first two string quartets in (1992, 1995) and his Clarinet Quintet: In Prairial and Thermidor (also 1995, with Andrew Sparling), this last taking its inspiration from a book by the Scottish artist Ian Hamilton Finlay, A Litany, a Requiem (1981).

At around the same time, Jackson also collaborated with Michael Nicholas (b1938), organist and master of the choristers at Norwich Cathedral, and this led to the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis (Norwich Service) (SATB and organ) of 1993. Prior to this came O nata lux (ATTBB) in 1990 for John Scott and the St Paul’s Cathedral Choir; and one of Jackson’s widely performed and recorded works, O sacrum convivium (SATB), also in 1990. In 1997, the BBC Singers gave the first of many performances of his music with A Vision of Aeroplanes (a piece that reflects the composer’s interest in the technology and aesthetics of aviation). This led three years later to a BBC commission for the BBC Singers: Cecilia virgo (2000), which was directed by Stephen Cleobury at Canterbury Cathedral. It all led eventually to his stint as Associate Composer with the ensemble from 2010 to 2013.

In the early 2000s, Jackson established a relationship with Andrew Nethsingha and the Truro Cathedral Choir, for whom he wrote his first Salve regina (2000) and the acclaimed Magnificat and Nunc dimittis (Truro Service) (2001) (all SATB). And it was in 2005 that Delphian released the first CD devoted exclusively to his choral music, titled ‘Sacred Choral Works’ and performed by the Choir of St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh, under Matthew Owens. A couple of years later (in January 2008), Polyphony and Stephen Layton recorded another such album: ‘Not No Faceless Angel’.

Earlier large-scale works include the Piano Concerto (2009), written for the Presteigne Festival; Doonies Hill Antiphon (2010), for string ensemble (commissioned by Red Note Ensemble); and In nomine domini (2010; SATB and six instruments), for the BBC Proms. The 35-minute cantata To the Field of Stars came in 2011, followed later by La musique (2013), premiered by Dame Felicity Lott and the Choir of Royal Holloway at the Cheltenham Festival.

Jackson’s unaccompanied Requiem, composed in 2008 for Jeremy Backhouse and the Vasari Singers, was written to ‘reflect the individual, as well as the universal, experience of loss’. Mirroring this universality, Jackson moved away from the traditional Requiem structure, removing the Kyrie, Dies irae sequence, Agnus Dei and most of the Lux aeterna and replacing them with poetry from a variety of spiritual traditions and cultures including writings by Australian Aboriginal poet Kevin Gilbert (1933-93), Samurai warrior H¯oj¯o Ujimasa (1538-90) and Quaker-influenced Walt Whitman (1819-92).

Jackson has established a longstanding creative partnership with Benjamin Nicholas (son of Michael Nicholas), whom he initially met when the latter was a Norwich Cathedral choirboy. He began writing for the Tewkesbury Abbey Choir in the early 2000s, his Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis (Tewkesbury Service) coming in 2006, before Nicholas moved to Merton College, Oxford, in 2008. A major work came in 2014 with the hour-long The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ,commissioned by Merton to celebrate the 750th anniversary of the foundation of the college. It begins with virtuosic wind solos, then a triumphant homophonic chorus, ‘Palm Sunday’, which rings with open fifths. It was important to Jackson to realise a large-scale work that isn’t ‘boring’. ‘That terrified me,’ he tells me, ‘that I wouldn’t be able to sustain people’s interest.’ A more recent Merton commission is The Christmas Story (2023), for trebles, SATB and 12 players. Both that and The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ have been recorded by Delphian, and have featured as Gramophone Editor’s Choices.

The World Imagined (2020), for solo tenor, SATB and orchestra, was a particular choral milestone for Jackson, commissioned by the Three Choirs Festival and performed at Worcester Cathedral under David Hill. It was the first time as a mature composer that Jackson had written for full orchestral forces. ‘David said he was amazed at how good the orchestration was, and I said, “Oh, thank you, David!” Apparently, I write for everybody as if they were soloists. I don’t know what else to do, because I’ve never been taught any kind of principles of orchestration.’

The choir may be at the centre of his oeuvre, but many of Jackson’s works have extended to include additional instruments, such as Ave, regina caelorum (2008) for SATB and electric guitar, To the Field of Stars for SATB, cello and percussion and Blumbergs in Venice (2018) for SATB and tubular bell. In The Christmas Story, he uses the alto saxophone, percussion and organ to weave in and out of his free choral sound, challenging our understanding of the mystery of the Nativity.

Jackson’s collaborations reach further than the UK church music scene, including a long-term relationship with the State Choir Latvija as well as with Donald Nally, US choral conductor and director of the Philadelphia-based multi-Grammy-winning chamber choir The Crossing. Commissions for The Crossing have included the unaccompanied Self-Portrait in Charleston, Orlando (2019) and Darest thou now, O soul? (2021), the latter with the dedication: ‘To Donald Nally on his 60th birthday, with love and boundless admiration.’ An album of Jackson’s choral works for the group is planned for release on Navona Records in the autumn.

Jackson is now moving into an era of writing for solo instruments with ensemble. An organ concerto – with ‘the same orchestration as the Poulenc’ – for Stephen Farr is on the cards, as is a flugelhorn concerto for Imogen Whitehead, Principal Trumpet of the Britten Sinfonia.

When I ask Jackson about his influences, he appears detached from them, and questions whether there are any: ‘I’m not sure that inspiration really exists. Where does it come from?’ He talks about composers writing for their audiences and how this can eventually fall flat. ‘A lot of the pioneers of minimalist music, John Tavener or Philip Glass, weren’t doing it to chase an audience, because, actually, the audience wasn’t there at first.’ Devising a piece of music, for Jackson, comes down to its structure and his interpretation of the text. ‘I see pieces as three-dimensional objects,’ he explains. ‘Composing is placing musical objects next to each other – one of the meanings of “compose” is “put together”.’ Primarily, Jackson is not interested in tastes or opinions of others impacting his work or style. ‘If you start trying to second guess what listeners will like then you’ve lost any kind of integrity.’

Recommended recordings

‘Not No Faceless Angel’

Polyphony / Stephen Layton

Hyperion (A/09)

This landmark recording of his choral works includes the breakthrough piece Cecilia virgo as well as Ave Maria (2004), O sacrum convivium andhis two settings of the Salve regina (2000 and 2004), exposing the ephemeral, ecstatic soundscapes in his sacred choral music.

Read the review

‘Airplane Cantata’

BBC Singers / David Hill, James Morgan; Rex Lawson pianola

Signum (10/14)

An album of Jackson’s commissions for the BBC Singers includes his soaring Airplane Cantata (2011) for SATB and pianola, which explores the early days of aviation through the setting of journal texts and news reports; and his multilayered, four-movement Choral Symphony (2012) for unaccompanied voices, a homage both to the city of London and to the BBC Singers and which features various texts dating from the first century to the present day.

Read the review

The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ

Emma Tring sop Guy Cutting ten Choir of Merton College, Oxford; Oxford Contemporary Sinfonia / Benjamin Nicholas

Delphian (4/19)

Jackson’s hour-long Passion is immediately striking as a new, contemporary meditation on the Passion of Christ with its remarkable orchestration and rousing choruses. It exposes Jackson’s use of texture, masterfully placing solo voice next to choir, strings, wind and percussion.

Read the review