Three Choirs Festival: The Open Fund for Organisations
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Contemporary Music and Commissions at the Three Choirs Festival 2017
The 2017 Three Choirs Festival programme will feature the greatest number of works by living composers in some time. For some 300 years, we have upheld a commitment to new music commissioning and performance. It’s our responsibility to continue this into the future, safeguarding the British choral tradition and contributing year-on-year to a rich musical heritage.
As the festival grows, we aim to nurture the up-and-coming voices of today so that tomorrows’ audience talk of a new generation with the same pride today’s audience talk of Elgar and Vaughan Williams: important and well-loved staples of the repertoire.
This year, we’re proud to be commissioning a new song-cycle from, the first of two featured composers, Sally Beamish. Kitty Whately will perform the work alongside Nights not Spent Alone by Jonathan Dove, our second featured composer. Opus Anglicanum tackle Sally Beamish’s Sea Psalm, Lynne Plowman’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Alexander Campkin’s by still waters. Exploring the voices of featured composers more thoroughly, we take to the cathedral for Dove’s There Was a Child. Young compsers, Owain Park and Thomas Hewitt Jones make their Three Choirs Festival debut, with performances of Shakespeare’s Love Songs and Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis. Roderick Williams, this year, marries tradition with invention, presenting a new set of motets setting text by Ursula Vaughan Williams, widow of festival favorite Ralph Vaughan Williams.
See the full programme on our website.