Welcome to Wheatsheaf, a non-profit publishing house for modern Catholic music.
Our music is designed to be versatile according to your community’s needs and resources, equally at home with guitar accompaniment or organ and four-part choir.
Chris (CJ) Olding has been a church musician for over thirty five years, serving in a number of parishes and cathedrals across the UK. Chris is currently an organist and music co-ordinator at St Bede’s church, Basingstoke and a musician at Farm Street Church, Mayfair, London. He is also a member of the Catholic Diocese of Portsmouth Liturgy Formation advisory group.
Chris is a proficient accompanist, pianist and guitarist. He also composes organ and liturgical vocal music in both traditional and, increasingly, contemporary styles. Chris specialises in developing small choirs, cantors and music groups and encouraging reluctant congregations to sing.
Chris also receives commissions for composition.
I’ve been composing since university, but only when attending a recent stewardship course did I think about making my work available. I was struck by the parable of the talents (Matthew 25) – a reminder that as Christians, our gifts come from God and we are called to share them in his service.
Contact Chris directly.
What our customers say
Wheatsheaf’s music is immediately useful for churches with modest to moderate musical resources. Their real gem is the Freedom Liturgy, a complete Mass setting which guitars and / or piano can play, a catchy melody which remains fresh through many repetitions with simple descant. I’m delighted Chris has written a version for use with Eucharistic Prayers with Children as the setting has proved as popular in primary schools as in parishes across the Dioceses of Brentwood and Westminster.
Frances Novillo, FISM, ARSCM
In the Diocese of Brentwood we have promoted The Freedom Liturgy as a very recommended setting through our music training days. We have found it a really excellent setting, accessible, easy to sing and remember and enduring. Since 2010, with the revised translation and the many settings – challenging enough in terms of selection – which have become available, it has been great to come across this particular setting and to be able to recommend it for varied and versatile use and for any combinations of singers, instruments and piano/organ.
Andrew Wright, Director of Liturgical Music, Brentwood Diocese
Chris’s settings, whether of psalms or Mass texts, have a real freshness which makes them not only attractive but eminently singable. Our cantor-led congregation entered into his Freedom Gloria with gusto!
Martin Pendergast, Liturgy Coordinator – St Joseph Bunhill Row, Westminster
The Archbishop Romero Trust was delighted to use Chris’ Olding’s simple and poignant setting of Psalm 125(126) with its response, Those who sow in tears shall sing when they reap, for the 2015 National Mass of Thanksgiving for the Beatification of Blessed Oscar Romero. We later commissioned him to write a hymn, God you raise up true disciples, used across the UK to mark Oscar Romero’s centenary in 2017.
Julian Filochowski, Chairperson, The Archbishop Romero Trust