TIM HUGHES on how an unlikely musical pairing resulted in a masterpiece

SHE is a chart-topping pop singer and one of Europe’s biggest recording artists; he is a choral composer and conductor from a small village in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds. But together, Katie Melua and Bob Chilcott have released one of the best-selling albums this Christmas.

In Winter, which reached the top 10 of the album charts, is a very different kind of Christmas record. Instead of celebrities or stars it features the vocal talents of 25 previously unknown women from a battle-scarred town in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

The Gori Women’s Choir were spotted by Katie, who herself from the town – also the birthplace of Stalin. And when she decided to create an album of their work, she turned to Bob, from Ascott-under-Wychwood, near Charlbury.

Bob, who was conductor of the chorus at the Royal College of Music and is Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Singers, has a distinguished back catalogue as a composer of sacred – and, particularly Christmas – music, but admits he was taken aback to be asked by the singer, one of Britain’s highest-selling female recording artists.

It’s been brilliant,” says the a 61-year-old father of five, who started his career in the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, and later sang tenor with the King’s Singers

“It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.

“Katie heard something of mine and got in touch completely out of the blue. I felt chuffed as she’s such a marvellous singer.”

Known as a singer, song-writer and guitarist, with six studio albums to her name, on In Winter Katie took on the role of co-producer for the first time.

“I was mesmerised by the choir’s tone and sonic richness. They are essentially a vocal orchestra,” says the musician, who scored 10 hits with The Closest Thing to Crazy and Nine Million Bicycles, and had a Number One with Eva Cassidy’s version of What a Wonderful World.

She enlisted Bob Chilcott to arrange the vocal parts. “I learnt the importance of restraint and space from Bob,” she says: “There was simply no one else I could think of who would be more perfectly suited to this particular challenge.”

The album, which took 18 months to record, features traditional Ukranian carol The Little Swallow (Shchedryk), Romanian carol Leganelul Lui Lisus (Cradle Song), Georgian folk song Tu Ase Turpa (If You Are So Beautiful), Nunc Dimittis from Rachmaninoff’s All Night Vigil, a version of Joni Mitchell’s River and new songs Perfect World, A Time to Buy and Plane Song – on which she recalls playing with her brother in an old rusty plane abandoned in a field after Georgia’s civil war.

“I’ve been asked a fair few times now why I chose to write around the theme of winter for this album, and, truthfully, the idea came from a conversation I was having with a friend of mine a few winters’ ago,” she says.

“We were both lamenting the fact that there didn’t seem to be a go-to album out there for us to listen to during the winter months – an album that would fill the house with wonderful, warm, poignant sounds rather than the usual jingle-bells pop songs that tend to hit the airwaves during that time of year. Something we could listen to from start-to-finish rather than on a song-by-song basis. So, that’s how the album was born – out of necessity!”

She flew out to Georgia with 12 boxes of equipment and built a DIY studio in Gori’s cultural community centre – still damaged from the Russian invasion in 2008. Bob joined the crew for two weeks.

“There were many unknowns,” says Katie. “We weren’t established producers, we were building a studio, the choir had never recorded with headphones, the sound engineer didn’t speak a word of Georgian and could I effectively communicate to the choir how I wanted this record to sound?”

Bob says the experience was a delight. “I feel really privileged to have been involved,” he said. “And Katie is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met!”

In Winter by Katie Melua and the Gori Women’s Choir, arranged by Bob Chilcott, is available now from BMG.