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Living Songs
4 July @ 12:45 pm – 1:45 pm
Tickets on the door (cash or card). Under 18s and carers go free
Doors open at 12:15 pm
Notes on the performers
Living Songs was started in 2013 by soprano Jessica Summers. Living Songs recitals share the vast wealth of talent by today’s living composers through songs that they have written for soprano and piano. These songs are showcased alongside more well known classical repertoire, so that an audience can discover new song territory but return to music that they may have heard before.
Jessica Summers
Jessica has performed around the UK both in concerts and in opera. An alumna of the Britten-Pears Young Artists Programme (Contemporary Performance directed by the late Oliver Knussen) and New Vocal Repertory courses (directed by Jane Manning), Jessica has performed twentieth and twenty first century music in a wide range of venues and festivals including the Three Choirs Festival, Holywell Music Room, Oxford (Pierrot Lunaire), St John’s Smith Square, Brighton Festival, York Late Music Festival, King’s Lynn Festival, Dartington Hall, Ripon Cathedral, Science Museum (London) and the St Martin in the Fields New Music Series. She has sung in several tours for English Touring Opera, for Opera North (Education) and for the Royal Opera, Covent Garden. Committed to singing new music, she has performed pieces such as A Mind of Winter (George Benjamin), Ring A Dumb Carillon (Birtwistle) & Beuk o’ Neucassel Sangs (Finnissy), Poems Almost of this World (Richard Causton) as well as giving the first performances of many new vocal pieces.
Jessica is passionate about music education and outreach. As an animateur, she has led a wide range of projects for music / community organisations nationally and internationally (Belize and India). She is the vocal consultant for the award winning Tower Hamlets Music Hub, THAMES, in London, overseeing singing in primary and secondary schools across the borough. She has led workshops for performers and composers at Royal Holloway University and Brunel University and teaches singing at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge University.
Jelena Makarova
Jelena Makarova is an award winning Russian-Lithuanian pianist based in London. She studied at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Drama and at the Royal Academy of Music, where she participated in masterclasses with Pierre Laurent-Aimard and György Kurtág. She is in high demand as a soloist, chamber musician, accompanist. Performances include concerts at Carnegie Hall, New York; Mozart’s Konzerthaus, Vienna; St. Martin-in-the-Fields; St. James’s Piccadilly; St. John’s Smith Square and St. George’s Hall, Bristol. Jelena has also collaborated with the New London Orchestra, National Youth Wind Orchestra of Great Britain, Baltic Art Form and the Royal Ballet School. She is a co-founding member of Living Songs, Chromatikon collective and Trio Sonorité, which was featured on Women’s Radio Station as part of the Future Classic Awards.
Jelena recently performed in the Illuminate series of concerts by women composers, where she performed music by historic and living composers, including Angela Elizabeth Slater, Sarah Westwood and Lithuanian composer Zita Bružaitė. During the Covid pandemic in 2020, she performed for the Bitesize Proms online concert series run by Help Musicians UK, giving the première of a set of piano miniatures entitled “Kindred”, written and dedicated to her by Sarah Westwood. This was recorded, as well as music by Rameau, for her upcoming album. She also gave the online première performance of “Edge of Time” by Ruta Vitkauskaite, (co-funded by Help Musicians UK) with her ensemble Trio Sonorité (cello, clarinet & piano). Jelena has recently been awarded a prestigious individual scholarship from the Lithuanian Cultural Council to première piano works by Lithuanian composers Medekšaitė, Bružaitė and Vitkauskaite in the UK. As well as performing, Jelena is a highly experienced piano teacher and has taught for over 15 years in east London primary & secondary schools.
Programme
Programme notes
Elliott Carter
La Musique (2007)
La Musique, for solo voice, is a short commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the publication of Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal in 1857, and is taken from that book of poems. Written in 2007 with text by Charles Baudelaire.
Source: Wikipedia
Gabriel Fauré
Three Songs Op. 8 (1877/79)
- Au bord de l’eau
- La Rançon
- Ici-bas!
Three songs, written in 1877/79. The first and third text by René-François Sully-Prudhomme and the second by Charles Baudelaire.
Source: Wikipedia
Boulanger / Pugno
2 songs from Les Heures Claires
- Le ciel en nuit s’est
- dépliéii.Vous m’avex dit…
These songs were written in 1910, with text by Emile Verhaeren (1855-1916).
Source: Wikipedia
Lili Boulanger
Trois Morceaux pour piano
- D’un Vieux Jardin
- D’un Jardin Clair
Written in 1914 (solo piano)
Source: Wikipedia
Henri Dutilleux
Chanson de le Déportée
San Francisco Night
The first song was written in 1945 with text by Jean Gandrey-Réty, the second in 1963 with text by Paul Gilson.
Source: Wikipedia
Nicola Lefanu
Au Chat
- D’un Vieux Jardin
- D’un Jardin Clair
Written in 2002 with text by Gwen John.
Source: Wikipedia
Maurice Ravel
Cinq Mélodies Populaires Grecques
- Chanson De La Mariée
- ii Là-bas, Vers L’Église
- Quel Galant M’est Comparable
- Chanson De Cueilleuses De Lentisques
- Tout Gai!.
Cinq Mélodies Populaires Grecques, written in 1904-06 with French translation by M.D. Calvocoressi.