Company history

Priory Records was founded in 1980 by its present owner Neil Collier, who has had a lifelong dedication to choral and organ music. Neil Collier started the company because he felt at that time that certain areas of the repertoire of church music were being neglected by other recording enterprises. Priory's first recordings therefore pre-dated the CD era, but the new medium was embraced shortly after its introduction.

Since its foundation twenty years ago, Priory has grown into a company with arguably one of the largest catalogues of choral and organ music in the world. Priory's 500th recording, the 13th volume of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis series, was issued in the Summer of 1997; it was made in the magnificent church of St Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, New York, with its Choir under the direction of Gerre Hancock, and the organist Judith Hancock. This series is one of a number which has proved popular with lovers of church music throughout the world, and which have received high praise from the critics.

Priory's Great European Organs series features fine instruments in Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Iceland, Spain and Switzerland amongst others, played by organists such as Graham Barber, David Briggs, Gerard Brooks, Colin Walsh, John Scott Whiteley, and Jane Watts. The complete Psalms of David series was purposely recorded with ten different Cathedral choirs so as to provide variety and contrast of interpretation. This series, together with the Great Cathedral Anthems and the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis series mentioned earlier, has seen Priory issue recordings of virtually every major Cathedral choir in Britain; several of them, such as the choirs of York Minster and those of Durham, Hereford, Lincoln and Rochester Cathedrals have appeared on more than one volume. Additionally, Priory has begun recording the complete New English Hymnal, and the complete Morning and Evening Canticles of Herbert Howells.

In addition to its artists and repertoire, Priory takes enormous pride in the technical quality of its recording, manufacturing and production - frequently receiving favourable comments from critics and public alike. The same techniques used in our commercial work are used when making private recordings, for which we are repeatedly commissioned by schools, choirs, local authorities and many other organisations.

A further aspect of Priory's work is as a highly successful independent distributor in Britain of a number of other labels: often the catalogues of these labels contain repertoire which complements that of Priory, such as those of Amphion, Isis and Motette, but equally there are those whose repertoire is quite different, for example the catalogues of Dynamic and Olympia.

Priory Records looks forward to the future with a number of exciting new issues, continually wishing to justify its title of "Britain's Premier Church Music Label."