This summer, Chamber Choir Ireland joins the likes of VOCES8, I Fagiolini, & Apollo5 on the LIVE from London festival line up.
Now in its tenth iteration, the acclaimed online concert series was originally created by the VOCES8 Foundation as a specific response to the Covid-19 pandemic. This summer’s line up features nine online concerts filmed in locations from Toronto to Denmark, Dorset and, of course, Dublin.
For our part, Chamber Choir Ireland will give audiences a second chance to experience O Radiant Dawn, filmed live in the Pepper Canister Church, Dublin in November 2022. Guest director Eamonn Dougan leads us in a programme of works by James MacMillan; his Renaissance influences, Byrd and Palestrina; and contemporary composers Eoghan Desmond and Kim Porter, whom he has influenced in turn. The concert weaves together the threads of sacred music from across the centuries—prefaced by an exclusive new interview with James MacMillan himself.
Host ensemble VOCES8 will feature in four of the nine concerts, including an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the group’s European summer tour and diverse repertoire from Allegri’s famous Miserere, to Jake Runestad and contemporary jazz; a special Byrd and Weelkes 400 celebration alongside the VOCES8 Foundation Choir led by Artistic Director Barnaby Smith; plus a performance by Apollo5 of Mass for Five Voices. Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Choir is the centrepiece of a VOCES8 and VOCES8 Scholars’ concert, filmed at the idyllic Milton Abbey.
The festival will also include a return appearance by I Fagiolini with Au Naturel, a programme inspired by nature, the passing of the year, and Brueghel the Younger’s paintings, The Seasons; and Mary Bevan and Davina Clarke, presenting a Handel concert with repertoire from their album Sweet Stillness.
In a choral and orchestral highlight of the festival, VOCES8, Jack Liebeck and the VOCES8 Foundation Choir and Orchestra will celebrate wonders of new classical music alongside old, pairing Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb with the world premieres of Taylor Scott Davis’ concerto Sing of Love: a Triptych, and Ed Rex’s I Stand in the Library, with text generated by AI in response to the original Christopher Smart poetry used in Rejoice in the Lamb.
A fellow newcomer to the festival, Dutch a cappella ensemble Wishful Singing are joined by world-famous composer and pianist Ola Gjeilo for a programme which centres around their renowned interpretations of Gregorian plainchant, featuring Marian-inspired chant, Scandinavian folk music, texts and music by Hildegard von Bingen, and Gregorian-inspired pieces such as Maurice Duruflé’s Ubi Caritas and Gjeilo’s Northern Lights. Also in their first LIVE From London performance, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and star Baroque violinist Rachel Podger (newly announced as BBC Music Magazine’s ‘Recording of the Year’ winner) perform a fiery programme of classical symphonies by Mozart and Haydn.
LIVE From London will be available to stream online worldwide from 12 August – 17 September 2023.