Spitalfields Music Festival - June 2020

Spitalfields Music Festival is returning to its roots this year with a Summer festival based at Christ Church, Spitalfields where the festival was founded 43 years ago. Over the weekend of 24 to 28 June 2020, the festival is presenting an array of events programmed by artistic curators Edmund Finnis, Kate Molleson, Errollyn Wallen and Spitalfields Music's CEO, Sarah Gee, all under the theme of Metamorphosis and Translation

Christ Church, Spitalfields
(Photo David Iliff. License: CC BY-SA 3.0)

Rameau's opera Pygmalion (based on the same Greek myth which gave rise to the musical My Fair Lady) is being performed by John Butt and the Dunedin Consort with soloists Nicholas Mulroy, Anna Dennis, Jessica Leary and Zoë Brookshaw. And cellist Lucy Railton will be performing her own compositions responding to the work.

The Dunedin Consort will also be joining forces with the National Youth Chamber Choir of Great Britain, with John Butt and Ben Parry sharing the conducting honours, for a performance of Thomas Tallis' glorious 40-part motet, Spem in Alium alongside Errollyn Wallen's 40-part When The West Wind Sings, a maritime-themed piece which takes the audience on a sea-faring voyage across five centuries. Also in the programme will be music by Kerry Andrew, Ben Parry, John Casken, Eriks Esenwalds, Roxanna Panufnik, and more Tallis. The vocal ensemble Exaudi, conducted by James Weeks, will present a mix of music ancient and modern, including the world premiere of Jürg Frey’s Landscape of Echoes, as well as Naomi Pinnock, Klaus Lang (the UK premiere of Veronika's Thread, and Rytis Mažulis alongside music from renaissance master Josquin des Prez.

Composer David Fennessy and cellist Sonia Cromerty are joining forces for Aberdeen, the world premiere of a work which weaves together live cello, electric guitar and electronics with found sounds, to explore memory, objects and family ties. For Fast Food, Fast Music, violinist Anton Miller, viola player Rita Porfiris and pianist Siwan Rhys will be performing a programme of short, fast pieces by eight women composers, some well-established, some emerging - Victoria Benito, Joy Effiong, Bobbie-Jane Gardner, Millicent James, Sarah Rodgers, Jasmin Kent Rodgman, Susannah Self and Heloise Werner - alongside Errollyn Wallen’s Five Postcards.

Catherine Lamb (viola/voice) will be joined by Rebecca Lane (Microtonal Bass Flute, voice) and Bryan Eubanks (Secondary Rainbow Synthesiser, voice) for a performance of Lamb's Prisma Interius IV, which features the Secondary Rainbow Synthesiser, "a software-based subtractive synthesizer which filters live environmental sounds from outside the performance space, functioning as a perceptual bridge by folding these sounds into the expanding tonal field of the music". Sounds intriguing.

Mixed in with these are events arising out of year-round commitment to the co-creation of music with its communities, including Errollyn Wallen and Katie Melua's Song Club, over 100 students in years 7-9 coming together for the Big Sing, Young musicians from across Tower Hamlets come together to perform, including Soundbox, Spitalfields Music's inclusive music collective, which brings together disabled and non-disabled musicians aged 11+ from East London, Open Call which features commissions from three talented music creators from backgrounds under-represented in the industry, and a two-hour walk around East London, lifting the lid on the black history of Spitalfields and featuring the author S I Martin and Chineke! Junior Orchestra.

Full details from the Spitalfields Music website.