Katy Thomson, soprano
Ana Manistireanu, piano
Tom Edney and David Harris, conductors

The sea has long been an inspiration for both sacred and secular music and is the evocative backdrop for this concert of choral music by twentieth and twenty-first century British composers, centred on a choral arrangement by Donald Fraser of Edward Elgar’s song cycle Sea Pictures.

The programme also includes Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s little-known cantata Meg Blane, a dramatic setting of Robert Buchanan’s poem about a shipwreck and a woman leading a rescue mission, and, reflecting the role of the sea in sacred music, Cecilia McDowall’s setting of the Marian hymn Ave Maris Stella (Hail, star of the sea). Complementing the choral music, soprano soloist Katy Thomson and guest pianist Ana Manistireanu will perform a selection of songs on nautical themes, including Rebecca Clarke’s gothic fairytale ‘The Seal Man’.

This concert marks Tom Edney’s final concert as music director of the Durham Singers.

Tickets available soon