“Look, what we have here shouldn’t exist,” says Ronny Krippner, Ripon Cathedral’s director of music. “It’s illogical for such a small city. And yet the right people pull together and make it happen. I find that beautiful.”

Ronny is discussing the quality of the cathedral’s music, particularly the choir, which was close to disbanding when he joined in 2022 and is now flourishing to an astonishing extent.

Last year it sung to huge crowds in Germany; on Saturday (July 5) it will perform a summer concert in Ripon before going on tour to Westminster Abbey later this month.

Ripon now has a musical output to rival that of much larger cathedral cities, and German-born Ronny has overseen the transformation. 

An organist schooled in the British and German choral traditions, he was director of choral music at Croydon Minster before moving to North Yorkshire when covid was sapping the life from the choir. 

Ripon Cathedral Choir School had closed in 2012 and only about 16 choristers remained.

“It was dire,” Ronny recalls. “The first thing I had to do was close down the boy’s choir. I said we needed to find a new model. No one will knock on your door anymore and say, ‘we want our son or daughter to be a chorister’. Since covid it’s a thing of the past. You’ve got to go out there, all guns blazing.”

Ronny's infectious energy and passion make him well suited to such an approach. Anthony Gray, director of music at St Wilfrid’s Church in Harrogate, describes him as “a force of musical nature”.

Every summer term, he visits primary schools within about a dozen miles of Ripon to talk about the choir. This term he has been to 33 schools. He asks pupils to sing three notes. 

“If there’s something there, we write to their parents," he says. "Potential is what we are after. The rest is our job.”

Numbers began to increase, despite the demands. Ronny says:

Daily choral singing

Remarkably, there are now 60 choristers and 12 choral scholars — teenage singers who carried out singing after being choristers — and they sound divine.

Big events, like the Christmas carol concert, fill the cathedral. “We don’t even have to print posters anymore,” says Ronny. “We put it on the website and the tickets go in no time.” Choral evensong services take place every night except Mondays and Saturdays.

Children and parents have bought into Ronny’s vision of what he is trying to achieve and what being a chorister is about:

The music department is the cathedral’s biggest department, with 11 staff. It costs £300,000 a year to maintain but generates considerable income as well as wider benefits that can’t be counted in cash. 

Ronny explains: “At the end of the day what are we here for? We are here to have services of cathedral standard that necessitate a certain level and standard of music.”

His work also fulfils a private passion for choral music.

'This looks and feels like a proper cathedral'

Bigger cities like York and Durham have choir schools but the introduction of VAT on private school fees and the decline in boarding schools means Ripon is unlikely to see its choir school return.

The cathedral withdrew plans this year to build an annexe on Minster Gardens, which would have included a song school. Ronny says:

Ronny, who has two children with his French wife, says he was wowed by Ripon when he came to audition for his job:

One of the biggest problems, he says, remains finding boy choristers. Like ballet, it has something of an image problem and he asks us to stress how welcome boys are.

But overall, he sounds content — and local music lovers seem happy he's around.

He says: "We make great music in a great cathedral with a dean and chapter who love what we do and are proud of it. What’s not to like? We are in a very good position here."