70 years ago Gerald Cooray picked up the baton and the legacy continues
“I found myself drawn to the idea of light,” said Harin Amirthanathan, conductor of the choir, on his journey of putting this programme together. The theme is “rich in both poetic and spiritual resonance,” he said, adding that “it also felt like a fitting tribute to our founder, the late Prof. Gerald Cooray, to whom we dedicate this performance.”
Gerald Cooray conducting the Philharmonic in 1959
“(His) vision of establishing an amateur choir… filled a void in the Sri Lankan music space 70 years ago,” said Sharmini Wickramanayake, President of the choir. “And even more so today, when most singers opt for other genres of music.”
Prof. Gerald Cooray was a geologist of international acclaim who was born to a musical family. According to his ‘Reminiscences of a Choral Conductor,’ (reportedly written in 2001), Gerald’s conducting days began as a six-year-old at the piano, with his mother watching the clock in his childhood home in Kuala Lumpur. Later, in Colombo, Gerald sang in the Maradana Methodist Church choir, where he was appointed organist and then choirmaster in the late 1940s. “We had good choirs in the Maradana and Kollupitiya Methodist Churches in Colombo,” he wrote, “and so we formed a combined choir, and began giving recitals of sacred music in our two churches. This then became the Maradana, Kollupitiya Choral Society.”
On August 14, 1948, the choir performed J. S. Bach’s ‘Jesu Priceless Treasure’ at Royal College. That same year, the Church Music Association of Ceylon was formed, and began the tradition of the Festival of Church Music growing to an annual event where Gerald conducted combined church choirs that at times numbered over 100 voices.
First female conductor: Mary Anne David (centre) with the CPC, 2000
Late in 1948, Gerald and his wife Joan moved to England where Gerald established his career as a geologist. They spent the next four years taking every opportunity to listen to, sing in and – most importantly – learn from well-known church choirs and directors in the country at the time. Towards the end of that stay, in June 1952, Gerald also attended a one-week Summer School for choirmasters and choristers at the Royal School of Church Music, in Canterbury.
Gerald Cooray
The couple returned to Sri Lanka in 1952, and Gerald resumed his place as the conductor of the Maradana-Kollupitiya Methodist Choir for many performances. Among these stands the performance of Passion music from Handel’s ‘Messiah’ in early 1953, which established what would become “a long and very rewarding association – and friendship” with Kalasuri Lylie Godridge. “It was also the first of many performances in which Lucien Fernando accompanied us on the organ so brilliantly,” Gerald continues in his ‘Reminiscences…’. In October of the same year, he conducted Haydn’s ‘The Creation’ with a choir of “about 60 voices” made up of the Maradana-Kollupitiya Methodist Choir and the Colombo Singers, at St. Michael’s Church in Colombo and then at Trinity College, in Kandy.
Gerald’s recollections make no mention of how or why the Colombo Philharmonic Choir came to be but say simply that it was formed on August 25, 1955, under the patronage of British composer R. Vaughan Williams. (A ‘book of words’ from the first performance of the CPC, priced at 50 cents, indicates that the date was August 23.)The choir first performed ‘Carols’ at the Royal College Hall, on December 6 of the same year.
In March 1956, Gerald conducted Bach’s ‘St. Matthew’s Passion’ at the Church of St. Michael and All Angels, Polwatte, with British tenor Peter Pears and another famous composer, Benjamin Britten, at the piano. “There was an audience of what seemed a thousand people,” Gerald later wrote in his ‘Reminiscences…’, “many standing outside the church and at the windows.”
The choir's first Christmas carols programme
1956 was also Mozart’s Bicentenary which the CPC celebrated with a performance of the C Minor Mass at St. Michael’s Church. The performance was recorded and broadcast over Radio Ceylon on September 5 and 12. Among performances given in 1957 is a special programme celebrating Ralph Vaughan-Williams’ 85th birthday. In 1959 the CPC took part in a Choral and Orchestral Concert with the Symphony Orchestra of Ceylon where Gerald conducted the choir and the orchestra in a performance of Haydn’s Mass in D minor. “I consider that performance to have been one of the highlights of my life with the baton,” he wrote.
In 1963 Gerald Cooray and Earle de Fonseka were awarded medals by the Italian government for presenting a joint concert by the CPC, the Catholic Choral Society and the Symphony Orchestra of Ceylon, to celebrate the 150th birth anniversary of the Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi. In 1964 Gerald Cooray formed the chamber choir, the Cantata Singers.
In December 1966 the CPC held a ‘Farewell Concert’ for Gerald and Joan, as they departed to Nigeria where Gerald took up a teaching appointment in the University of Ife. “The choir later faced waned enthusiasm as there was no permanent conductor…,” one member recalled, until Phyllis Kolberg and Raymond Adlam rejuvenated the choir with their successive efforts as conductors.
It was about this time that a 16-year-old Mary Anne David (nee Roberts), today one of Sri Lanka’s most esteemed musicians, joined the CPC.
“I was probably the youngest in the choir, and it was a wonderful experience for me…” Mary Anne told the Sunday Times. She went on to become the first female conductor of the choir in 2000, following in the footsteps of Paul Jayarajan and Lylie Godridge. “The Colombo Philharmonic Choir was one of the finest choirs at the time I joined them. There is no comparison… the sound was magnificent!”
Harin Amirthanathan
She last heard the choir at the end of 2024 and found that that it still has a “super balance” under the baton of Harin Amirthanathan who took over after Mary Anne’s successor, Manilal Weerakoon.
“(Harin) is one of the finest conductors I have met here. He is very knowledgeable and dignified, and he is very calm, and he gets a fantastic response from his choir. And it was the same with Dr. Gerald Cooray.”
Gerald and Joan lived, worked and performed abroad for two decades after their departure in 1966, but returned regularly to Sri Lanka for the holidays, when they would perform with the CPC. Mary Anne had the honour and delight of working with both of them on these occasions and recalls the opportunity with a singular appreciation.
“(Gerald) could say the hardest thing in a kind way,” Mary Anne says, recalling also that he possessed a charisma that held the spirit of the choir high. “Such dignity, such charm, that when you finish with the practices, you went home on a high.”
The Coorays returned permanently to Sri Lanka in 1986 and lived in Mahakande to the end of their days. They worshipped regularly at the Methodist Church in Kandy where Gerald often played the organ. Even in his retirement they worked to uplift the quality of choral music, resuscitating the Kandy Music Society and inaugurating the annual Kandy Church Choirs Festival. All this, on the sidelines of Gerald’s continuing work as a geologist and educationist.
The Colombo Philharmonic Choir opens its Platinum Jubilee Season with ‘Lux: A Choral Spectrum of Light and Hope’, starting 7 p.m. on Sunday, June 1, 2025, at the Chapel of the Hope of the World, Ladies’ College, Colombo. The programme is centred on Morten Lauridsen’s ‘Lux Aeterna’ and includes works by Johannes Brahms, Randall Thompson, Healey Willan, Eric Whitacre and Kim Andre Arnesen. The total concert time is roughly 70 minutes with no intermission.
Programmes priced at Rs.1500 each will be available at the door. Call Sharmini on 077 770 2642 for inquiries.
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