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The Kestrel Road and other stories

21st century choral music

Come and be enveloped in the sound of Reading Bach Choir’s first post-lockdown programme of musical story telling.

This evening of haunting and compelling music is heralded by a choral fanfare, Prelude, by the Norwegian, Ola Gjeilo, followed by two song cycles for choir and piano, including The Kestrel Road by Peter Maxwell Davies, a piece suggestive of the ‘elusive land and seascapes’ of the Orkney Islands, and influenced by folklore and music.

Bob Chilcott’s setting of five Aesop Fables uses the composer’s gift for melody and delivers some powerful settings of the famous texts.

Two unaccompanied works by female composers: Media Vita by Kerensa Briggs and Kyrie after Byrd by Roxanna Panufnik will be performed, as well a setting of James Agee’s poem, Sure on this Shining Night by Morten Lauridsen, already one of the classic choral works of this century.

The concert will be approximately one hour without an interval.