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“Songs from the Marsh” (working title) by Rory Boyle
With grateful thanks to PRS Foundation, JAM is delighted to commission this 20-minute work for choir and French horn by multi award-winning Scottish composer Rory Boyle (b.1951); one of the UK’s most inspirational composers.
For this commission, Rory and acclaimed poet Claudia Daventry explored Romney Marsh on England’s south-east coast in July 2017, absorbing the rugged 15-mile stretch of marshland, of which legends, mystical characters and occurrences from Doomsday to today abound. With Rory’s voracious appetite for new material and Claudia’s exceptional word-smith’ing, they will create a captivating and original work of new music and texts, keeping alive in contemporary language stories over time that will fascinate and inform forever.
Rory is relishing this opportunity to write for new forces; choir and evocative French horn. Intrigued by the Baltic composers repeated blocks of sounds that are random but work harmonically, in this commission he will explore this new landscape. Although an accomplished, mature composer, this work will fuel Rory’s keenness to push his boundaries and go to new places, working with new instrumentation and sound-worlds.
“Songs of the Marsh” will premiere in JAM on the Marsh Festival on 7th July 2018 with BBC Singers and Timothy Jackson (Principal horn, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra) with broadcast on Radio 3 and multiple performances in 2018-19.