ANIMALS!

The New London Chamber Choir presents its first concert with its new Music Director, Matthew Hamilton, on Friday 30 January 2015 at Wilton's Music Hall. The concert is a positive carnival of animals from composers old and new. As should be expected from this group, contemporary composers are to the fore and the concert includes the UK premiere of Four Madrigals from the Natural World by the Danish composer Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen (born 1932) setting texts by the Australian poet Les Murray. Gudmundsen-Holmgreen is a composer who has been seen as something of an anti-expressive, anti-romantic with a fondness for musical absurdism. His music is beautifully crafted and often poetic. The songs, written in 2001, use 'madrigalisms' as animal imitations so we can expect something unusual and exuberant.

Also included in the programme is Giles Swayne's 1995 setting of Blake's poem The Tiger, Puerto-Rico born composer Roberto Sierra's Latin-American inspired Cantos populares (which the group commissioned and recorded in 1987), Judith Bingham's Unpredictable But Providential and  Meredith Monk's Panda Chant II which comes from her 1983 opera The Games, premiered by the Schaubühne Ensemble of West Berlin. Performance of Panda Chant II involves coordinating the vocal material with rhythmic stamps and claps, including working with two different rhythmic cycles at once.

New London Chamber Choir was founded in 1981 by James Wood and is ones of Europe's foremost vocal ensembles having given many world and British premieres.