Waverley Singers

The overarching theme of this concert, part of our Jubilee Year celebrations, is the relationship between music and the natural world, a subject that was dear to the heart of former choir member and Frensham parishioner Josephine Reader. Jo was both a farmer and a singer: for many years she was the Secretary of the Waverley Singers, and she gifted Pierrepont Farm to the Countryside Regeneration Trust.

It is thanks to a further generous bequest from Jo that we are able to offer our audience the world première of a new work, "Five Nocturnes", commissioned from Owain Park, one of the country's most inspirational young composers, who is also an accomplished performer in his own right. As Owain says below in our podcast conversation with him, the work sets five different poems to music, exploring the different shades of night-time, from the setting of the sun to its rising again the following morning:

We will also perform works especially selected for choir, cello, clarinet, and piano/organ, with our three instrumental soloists, taken from a collection entitled Music for Choir and Cello and published by Oxford University Press.

In addition we will hear poems written and read by Rosie May Jones. Rosie is widely recognised for her poems that aim to connect the listener to the natural world, including this one made with the Surrey Hills Natural Landscape, imagining how our efforts to protect the world around us will appear to an audience in 2100.

See here our podcast conversation with Rosie May, in which she talks about the essential connection between humanity and nature and, as she puts it, how "This land can soothe the human heart."

It's going to be a rather special concert!

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