Eight commissions for ORA Singers' Emergency Composers in collaboration with Tate Modern

The eight composers chosen for ORA Singers and Tate Modern's commissions
Dani Howard, Sorana Santos, Eunseog Lee, James B. Wilson, Kemal Yusuf, Ben Park, Florence Anna Maunders and Satoko Doi-Luck.

ORA Singers launched its Emergency Composers’ Fund in collaboration with Tate Modern earlier this year in response to the COVID-19 crisis to provide work for composers during lockdown (composers being one particular arm of freelance workers who have been particularly affected by the pandemic).

545 composers registers, and now eight have been selected. Each composer will write a reflection on an art-work from Tate Modern, from its international collection. The final works will capture eight musical voices during this unique period of human history. Each work will last three to six minutes and be written for unaccompanied choir. Discussions are now underway about the showcase performances for the works.

The composers and the artworks to which they are responding, are:

• Dani Howard [read my 2019 interview with Dani]
• Haegue Yang, Sol LeWitt Upside Down - Structure with Three Towers, Expanded 23 Times, Split in Three 2015
• Sorana Santos 
• Ibrahim El Salahi, Reborn Sounds of Childhood Dreams 1961-5
• Eunseog Lee 
• Agnes Martin, Morning 1965
• James B. Wilson 
• Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Untitled (Alhalkere)1989
• Kemal Yusuf [read about Kemal's The Key-Crack Chronicles]
  
• Cildo Meireles, Babel 2001
• Ben Park 
• Lorna Simpson, Then & Now 2016
• Florence Anna Maunders [Bromley Symphony Orchestra premiered Florence's Bacchanal in March 2020]
  
• Helen Frankenthaler, Vessel 1961
• Satoko Doi-Luck [whom we last saw wearing her other hat, and playing the harpsichord for Ceruleo's performance of Clare Norburn's Burying the Dead - review]
  
• Henri Matisse, The Snail 1953

Now all we have to hope is that Tate Modern remembers to put the works on display when it re-opens, otherwise there will be hordes of dissatisfied music lovers wandering round the museum.

 ORA Singers Artistic Director, Suzi Digby OBE, commented:

"The huge and unprecedented response generated by this fund has highlighted just how much need there is for artist support during this pandemic. We would have loved to be able to offer many more opportunities to the hundreds of talented, imaginative and deserving composers we heard from, but are so thrilled to be able to support these eight commissions."