Out of the Shadows in Clapham and Estonia

Following its successful premiere in February 2023, Out of the Shadows, the evening of my songs will be returning in 2024 with performances for Pride 2024 at the Omnibus Theatre, Clapham, and at the Glasperlenspiel Festival in Tartu, Estonia, during Tartu's year as one of the European Capitals of Culture.

The performers are tenor Ben Vonberg-Clark (precentor at the church of St John the Divine, Kennington and conductor of the London Youth Boys' Choir), baritone Jonathan Eyers (currently a Young Artist at the National Opera Studio), and pianist Nigel Foster (founder and artistic director of the London Song Festival).

As part of 96 Festival, Omnibus Theatre's celebration of queerness and theatre, Out of the Shadows will be performed on 16 June 2024. Then on Friday 5 July 2024, the programme will be presented at St John's Church, Tartu as part of the Glasperlenspiel Festival. The festival is a leading musical event in the Estonian Summer and was founded in 1995 by Estonian composer and music producer, Peeter Vähi.

The programme features two cantatas that take us from the twilight world of the 19th & early 20th century homosexual to a desperate search for eternal life, alongside songs celebrating love in all forms. Out of the Shadows moves from the earliest tentative admissions of same sex attraction, to cruising in a bath house in Imperial Russia to Walt Whitman’s unashamed admission of his sexuality. Et expecto explores the search for eternal life in different forms, from the certainty of the Latin creed, to explorations of cryogenics, the body-snatching of Burke and Hare and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, before resolving in the homoerotic pantheistic transcendentalism of Walt Whitman with its celebration of Death itself.

Alongside these there are love songs and settings of Michaelangelo’s sonnets plus a depiction of an Aids candlelit memorial.

Out of the Shadows

Ben Vonberg-Clark (tenor), Jonathan Eyers (baritone), Nigel Foster (piano)
7pm 16 June 2024 - Omnibus Theatre, 1 Clapham Common Northside, London SW4 0QW
10pm 5 July 2024 - Glasperlenspiel Festival at St John's Church, Tartu, Estonia