As this new compilation hits the shops, Anthony Way will just be about to celebrate his sixteenth birthday. This collection reflects what he achieved as a boy treble, in a short yet action-packed career. He was just eleven when I first met him in my role as music supervisor for the BBC TV‘s series The Choir. He was thrust into the limelight as the choirboy whose voice saved a cathedral. As the director of The Choir, Ferdinand Fairfax, wrote at the time:‘Whoever we chose to act the part had to sing well enough to convince us he really could make a recording capable of becoming a commercial hit. He also had to act like a Veteran. Harder still, he could only be ten or eleven years old,The Lord‘s Prayer arranged from David Fanshawe‘s ‘African Sanctus‘, became another calling-card for Anthony as it was (and still is) heavily featured on BBC1‘s Sunday morning First Light programme. All the tracks remain fresh and I know it to be his family‘s favourite among his recordings. Also included here for the first time is a haunting reinterpretation of a favourite Pop classic - John Lennon‘s ‘Because‘, recorded during that summer but never released. During Anthony‘s final days at St Paul‘s (scorching July afternoons!) we recorded The Choirboy‘s Christmas in Temple Church, where Ernest Lough had made his famous recording of ‘O for the Wings of a Dove‘ seventy years earlier. Some of the more unusual (and least ‘Christmassy‘ items are included here, including a splendid version of the old favourite ‘Do you hear what I hear?‘ Knowing that Anthony‘s biological clock was ticking we lost no time in arranging his final recording for January 1997, made in his new school environment of Uppingham, Rutland. This became the album Wings of a Dove. His voice and musical maturity were now at their peak and this was a fitting finale for such a brief recording career. Highlights include the Lloyd Webber ‘Pie Jesu‘ (duetting with world-renowned soprano Barbara Bonney), Handel‘s ‘Largo‘ and Anthony‘s second and more assured version of ‘O for the Wings of a Dove‘, which he had originally recorded as part of the Choir soundtrack. Within a few weeks of recording, two years before a choirboy normally achieves full strength and maturity. Technically, we were told, the part is an impossibility. No such boy could exist. A choirboy who could act was the only answer. Three hundred auditions later, I met Anthony Way, a junior chorister at St Paul‘s Cathedral. His Voice showed unique potential with a huskiness and natural sweetness. A day of gruelling Video tests revealed a professional‘s commitment to excellence, a natural screen presence, and instinctive response to direction and an uncanny sense of emotional honesty. This voice could save a Choir.‘ The rest is history. The album reached number three in the UK Pop album charts and sold over 250,000 copies. Anthony was in constant demand for TV shows and large events, including singing ‘Panis angelicus‘ at the climax of the VE Day concert in London‘s Hyde Park, in front of the Queen and a crowd of 150,000 people and a worldwide TV audience of countless millions. The six tracks from Anthony‘s next album, The Choirboy, will be a treat for many as it was bizarrely excluded from the then UK Classical Chart and was therefore difficult to find in the shops. Anthony was by this time in much stronger, more confident voice, and as producer of this album I attempted to reach out beyond the traditional cathedral sound to songs that his angelic Voice could breathe life into. it was all over. On a promotional tour of Japan, Anthony ended up miming to playback and entertained TV audiences with his version of ‘Angie‘ with accompanying electric guitar! If anyone thought life would now slow down for the now more gruff-sounding ex-choirboy, they would be wrong. Last year he was cast as the title role, and alongside Greta Scacchi, in the motion picture adaptation of the children‘s classic Tom‘s Midnight Garden. To be released in early 1999, the film was premiered at the Giffoni Film Festival in ltaly and resulted in Anthony being mobbed by one hundred and fifty admiring Italian females. ‘Hey, Di Caprio!‘ joked the cabdriver as we sped away the pursuing girls