As part of its 10th Anniversary celebrations, ORA Singers & Suzi Digby OBE return to The Stoller Hall with a new programme – Spirit of Place – exploring themes of time, memory and how place shapes one’s identity.
The programme is built around three key works by a trio of our greatest living choral composers: The Lost Words by James Burton, setting the spell-poems of Robert MacFarlane, Five Childhood Lyrics by Sir John Rutter, and a major new commission by Gabriel Jackson – an 8-minute a cappella piece taking its inspiration from The Fens.
The concert opens with another work by Jackson, his setting of To Morning by William Blake, which leads into a folksong from The Fens arranged by Michael Tippett. There are a series of choral folksong arrangements scattered throughout, alongside reflective gems such as Herbert Howell’s Even such is time and Samuel Barber’s little-known but gorgeous To be sung on the water.
“ORA Singers’ achievement in commissioning and performing 100 new compositions from an impressively wide range of composers must be unprecedented in the entire history of music. It has been an extraordinarily imaginative and generous gift to the composers, and indeed to choirs and audiences everywhere.” – Sir John Rutter
