Brilliant, but they ought to give you an honorary degree too for performing! 🎶🎶

It was so good…do come again soon.

Thought you might like this collage at University of Birmingham music building. Good luck with your book. However, I am going to unfollow you, because the sheer volume of your posts dominates my feed and I am more into classical music 🎶

It sounded beautiful 👏👏

Excellent interview! I can thoroughly recommend @leahbroad.bsky.social’s book so engagingly written.

reprising the introduction, with words and sentiments from Ecclesiastes and a call for peace, Dona Nobis Pacem. After a magical pause, the audience responded to this amazing piece of music with a prolonged standing ovation.

A swingle style lyrical scat melody from sopranos and pizzicato raindrops from the other parts enchanted the audience and brought tears to the composer’s eyes. The final movement, set to words from Genesis served to summarise all four seasons and led neatly into Joanna’s postlude…

of the violin solo. Organist Gavin Roberts rose to the challenge in this and every movement brilliantly. Winter’s slow movement brought us cosy warmth with a moving tribute to the late Ward Swingle, Joanna’s mentor.

Whereas Vivaldi thinks of this as a hunt scene, Joanna’s setting of Psalm 150 transformed it into a hymn of praise on various musical instruments.
Winter started with frost, portrayed by the choir singing icy staccato syllables from Vivaldi’s own Italian sonnet, against a virtuoso organ arrangement

Autumn began with a rousing harvest hymn, cleverly intertwined with an account of the creation story sung by the confident high sopranos in the choir. The following slow movement found Emily Brontë again musing on the fall of leaves in autumn, before the choir joyfully sang two psalm arrangements.

the opposite process to the usual setting of lyrics to original music. The third movement of summer was magical, with body percussion evoking the summer storm (and more laughter from the audience as they enjoyed the effect).

Summer also began in madrigal style with cuckoos, moonlight and the first hints at a thunderstorm. The first two movements benefit from the insertion of Emily Brontë’s haunting poem, Moonlight, Summer Moonlight. Joanna has been really clever in retro-fitting words into Vivaldi’s music…

impressive whistling to represent birdsong! Sopranos soared beautifully with the lark in the slow central movement before a vocal evocation of bagpipe drones from lower voices entertained the audience in a fa-la-la chorus inspired by Thomas Morley.

This calmly sets the scene in a baroque style, though I thought the organ introduction had a distinct echo of the In Paradisum from the requiem by Fauré (who also had an anniversary last year).
Then spring saw the chorus confidently taking the soloistic violin part with some particularly…

After an introduction by the composer, outlining her motivation and the process of composing this intricate tribute to Vivaldi, we launched into the main piece. Joanna bookends the 12 movements taken from the Four Seasons with her own compositions to words from Ecclesiastes.

.. by Rebekah Abbott, whose flowing arm movements elicited passion, style and great diction from the singers.
The first half of the programme consisted of other pieces written by Joanna and her husband Alexander L’Estrange, plus choral works which formed inspiration for some of Joanna’s libretto…

imaginative and exciting new work and we give its Birmingham premiere on 14 June. On this occasion, the choir was Luminosa Voices, an eighty-strong ensemble of confident singers, who have learned the piece in record time since scores were released in December 2024. They were brilliantly conducted

@sellyparksingers.co.uk follow with a Birmingham premiere in June.