Ex-BBC producer Antony Pitts featured on 'Seven Letters' album.

THE BBC producer and composer Antony Pitts, who sprang to national fame over his resignation from the BBC after the TV transmission of the blasphemous Jerry Springer: The Opera, is the composer of a new album, 'Seven Letters', performed by Tonus Peregrinus. Throughout his time at the BBC Pitts was also conducting the early and new music ensemble Tonus Peregrinus, receiving a Cannes Classical Award for their chart-topping release of Arvo Part's 'Passio' in 2003, and composing music for the Clerks' Group, Rundfunkchor Berlin, the Swingle Singers, Westminster Cathedral and Klaus Heymann of Naxos. In June 2005, for the first time, a complete CD of his sacred choral music is to be released on one of Britain's leading independent record labels, Hyperion.

At the centre of this new recording is 'Seven Letters', thought to be the only choral setting of St John's damning indictment of the first century Church in Asia Minor from the book of Revelation. Antony Pitts is a distinctive new voice whose music has been premiered at Wigmore Hall in London, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Philharmonie Kammermusiksaal in Berlin. Pitt's choral music combines a jazz-infused idiom within a tight structure of traditional musical form and a response to the sacred texts which is both fervent and captivatingly heart-on-sleeve.