The Chiltern Choir’s next concert is on Saturday 16 March, at 7.30pm, at The Clarendon Muse Concert Hall, Watford Grammar School, WD18 7JA,
It includes Handel’s Dixit Dominus and will premiere a composition, The Way through the Woods, by Musical Director, Michael Cayton, commissioned by Helen Heenan, a member of the choir.
In 2019 Helen was looking to commission a piece of music that was secular in nature with an environmental message. This is what Michael has delivered. It presents the four seasons using texts from poems by Houseman, Bronté, Taylor Coleridge and Swinburne, interspersed with first hand accounts of real environmental events such as Storm Sandy and the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster. Each movement uses a short passage taken from an anthem by Extinction Rebellion, warning the listener of environmental catastrophe. However, the piece ends with Kipling’s poem “The Way through the Woods” from which it borrows the title, which speaks of nature’s ability to reassert itself and to heal.
Tickets are £18 online (under 18’s free) or £20 at the door. More information and tickets are at www.chilternchoir.org.uk.
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