From the Sleevenotes: New Dawn

Sleevenotes from the forthcoming album New Dawn (1999) by Andrew Downes (1950-2023)

Oratorio in two parts for SATB soloists, chorus and symphony orchestra including guitar ensemble

Part 1

1. ‘A Spirit is Departing’ 

2. ‘Journey’ (tone poem)

3. ‘Awaiting Dawn’ (chorus) 

4. ‘Summer Dawn’

Part 2

5. ‘Kitchi-Manitou’ (tone poem)

6. ‘Invocation’

New Dawn: Andrew Downes’ Cross–Cultural Oratorio of Nature and Rebirth

Born in Handsworth, Birmingham, on 20 August 1950, Andrew Downes grew up in a musical family. Just as the Bolton-born Thomas Pitfield was closely associated with Manchester, so Downes retained strong familial and artistic connections with Birmingham throughout his life. His father, Frank, was a horn player in the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the Midland Light Orchestra and his uncle was a violist in the Philharmonia. After study at Aldridge Grammar School, he won a choral scholarship to St John’s College, Cambridge, directed at that time by George Guest. He began his studies at Cambridge in 1969 before going on to the Royal College of Music to study composition with Herbert Howells and singing with Gordon Clinton. Howells, with whom he was well acquainted as a choral scholar, was to be a profound influence on him as a future composer. In September 1975 he returned to Birmingham to take up a lectureship at the Birmingham School of Music (now Royal Birmingham Conservatoire), where he remained until his retirement in 2005. He continued to be productive as a composer and his music was published and promoted by Lynwood Music, a company run by his wife Cynthia. He died on 2 January 2023.

Though instrumental music proved an important part of Downes’s output, especially for the horn (which he had learned to a proficient level as a youngster), choral music, given his background at school and Cambridge, was nevertheless a significant agency of his style and included works such as The Temple of Solomon (commissioned by the Birmingham Festival Choral Society in 1980 to commemorate the restoration of Birmingham Cathedral), The Marshes of Glynn (commissioned by the Birmingham Conservatoire in 1985) and A St Luke Passion (commissioned by the Wolverhampton Civic Choir in 1993). The oratorio, New Dawn Op. 70, the most substantial of his works for choir, soloists and orchestra (including a guitar ensemble), dates from 1999 and was commissioned by Birmingham Conservatoire to celebrate the millennium in 2000. It was first performed on 18 February 2000 at the Adrian Boult Hall by the Birmingham Conservatoire Symphony Orchestra and the University of Central England Chorus, conducted by Steven Lloyd. A second performance took place in King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, on 27 October the following year with the Millennium Scholars Chorus and Orchestra and the Birmingham Conservatoire Guitar Ensemble, conducted by Stephen Cleobury.

Conceived in two parts and in six movements, and reflecting the composer’s heterodoxic interest in non-European cultures, New Dawn, a short oratorio of about an hour, is made up of texts taken from nineteenth-century translations of poetry of Native American tribes found at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Centre and University of New Mexico, and attempts to chart a journey from the departing soul to its rebirth as viewed through the prism of the earth’s life-cycle. Very much a hybrid work, the oratorio consists of four choral movements, interspersed in Part I (the second movement) and Part II (the fifth movement) by purely orchestral tone poems, a feature which highlights the significance of the orchestra within the work. The opening movement, ‘A Spirit is Departing’, has a processional ambience and is essentially ternary in structure. The outer frame sets the solemn tone of the departing spirit and the closing benediction; and various threads reveal the American location – melodic impressions of Native American chant and atmospheric strummed guitars – but much of the choral style derives its language from those poignant dissonances exploited so effectively by composers such as Parry, Stanford, Walton and Howells (whose Lydian imprint is often pervasive). The inner section is, however, more animated in its depiction of the spirit’s flight, ‘borne by the “cloud eagles”’ to its ancestors, energised by the delicate orchestral filigree of strings and wind, with, on occasion, the more forceful interjection of the brass. The sense of travel invoked in the first choral movement forms the focus of the purely instrumental orientation of the second movement, ‘Journey’, where the soul moves towards its rebirth. Again, there is reference to Native American melody in the initial bars, and this continued modal character infuses much of the movement’s thematic material (as it does in much of the oratorio as a whole), especially the more dynamic, quasi-ritualistic ostinati which become increasingly prevalent as the mood develops into one of joy and expectation. The feeling of elation can also be felt in the inner paragraph, notably the fulsomely romantic statement in B major (featuring the strings in octaves), but this is also coloured by uncertainty expressed more introspectively by the solo strings whose gentle, quizzical gestures complete the movement. The third movement, effectively a choral interlude, is for unaccompanied choir and the four soloists, very much evoking the English choral style Downes admired in Howells and the composer’s attendant mysticism. The composer described it as ‘Song: Awaiting Dawn’, sung by the soul’s searching, aspiring mother. At the conclusion of this third movement, which is left harmonically ‘open’, the demeanour of the motet is quitted immediately for a longer text, ‘Summer Dawn’. Here the sensibility shifts to one of sensuousness and eroticism, combined with notions of divinity, ritual and human love. This more substantial movement forms the finale to Part I and commences with an evocation of nature (not dissimilar to those eloquent sound pictures in Delius’s A Mass of Life and the conclusion of his Requiem). Much of its lively spirit is, nevertheless, given over to rhythmical elation, where the choral material’s principally homophonic textures are driven on by the orchestra’s momentum and the punctuative brass fanfares. Yet, in spite of this vibrant filament which permeates the main body of the structure, the movement is also imbued with an underlying sense of contemplation (recalling the third movement) which occupies the concluding music in a tranquil E major.

The tone poem which opens Part II bears the title ‘Kitchi-Manitou’, the name of the chief god known to many Native American societies. Marked ‘Andante con moto e misterioso’, delicate, imitative arabesques for wind are accompanied by irregular 5/4 ostinato figures provided by guitars based on a G pedal point (V of C). For the first part of the tone poem this proves to be an important structural feature, occurring like a rondo idea between fantasia-like episodes of miniature contrapuntal ‘conversations’. A new section, marked ‘più mosso’, breaks this mould. The G pedal subsequently becomes a more harmonic focus in a procession of diatonic progressions in which the wind and brass dialogues continue. A third thematic departure (initiated by low trombones) is more outwardly romantic and lyrical for the full panoply of the orchestra. As a developmental phase of the movement, this part is more tonally unstable and gives rise to the dramatic climax which is achieved before the rapturous aura dissipates into another closing paragraph of benediction (in the high wind), symbolised by the initiation of a chorale in B minor. From here the movement stabilises and concludes celestially in the strings.

This orchestral essay provides a ruminative foreword for the final movement of the oratorio, ‘Invocation’. As a more extended choral statement, very much a counterpart to the finale of Part I, it serves as a paean of praise in which thanks to the Sun-Father, Kitchi-Manitou, who appears far off, is acknowledged as the creator of the life cycle and the god of natural beauty. Worship of Kitchi-Manitou is embodied at the beginning by ostinati which underpin chant-like statements from the brass and chorus (‘Come you, ascend the ladder’). From this emerges a more spirited encomium, rhythmically invigorated by the orchestra which contrasts with the homophonic statements of the chorus and soloists. In turn, the opening ostinati return (‘Hold your gaming-stick’), now ‘ff’ as the musical landscape turns into a dance of exultation, peppered with interjections from the effusive combinations of percussion. Central to the sense of invocation is, however, a more sustained, meditative section, based in E major (a tonality which runs through the work as a strong tonal reference point) for chorus (‘Cover my earth mother’), and while this material assumes the identity of a mantra, the surrounding orchestral music expresses the spirit of a Bacchic dithyramb, in which many of the past themes of the oratorio return. The last part of the movement juxtaposes moments of prayer, as articulated by the four soloists (‘Let our children live and be happy’) and chorus, with jubilant dance in celebration of the soul’s journey (‘Let all complete the road of life; let all grow old’). The final gestures of the work are, however, left to the orchestra, which, in their tranquillity, restore the calming vision of the new dawn.
© Jeremy Dibble 2026

TEXTS 

All texts are 19th-century translations of traditional poetry from various tribes of North American Indians, predominantly of the New Mexico area. Together, the poems form a story about the life-cycle of the Earth from the death to the rebirth of a soul. The Oratorio is a celebration of this natural cycle, and is dedicated to all those societies and individuals who are content to see themselves as part of Mother Earth, rather than seeking to own and, eventually, destroy her.

PART ONE

1. A Spirit is Departing

The opening of the work describes the yearning of the spirit to join his ancestors in “the south-west”. He asks the “cloud eagles” to bear him there, and the people left behind are asked to remember him and to think well of him. The music is full of solemnity and pathos, giving a sense of processional ritual, whilst at the same time there are moments of great joy and searing sorrow.

All the white cloud eagles, 
Lift me up with your wings and take me. 
And also you other eagles. 
Come and lift me up with your wings, way up high, all over the world. 
No one can see the place you are taking me. 
Way down in the South-west where our fathers and mothers have gone. 
Put me there with your wings. 

Thanks to Mother Earth, the whole world, and Mother Eagle. 
Bless my people. 
I am the spirit; 
I am leaving for my own place where I shall be happy all my life. 
I shall remember you people all the time. 
I thank you all. 

I am on the way, travelling the road to where the spirits live, 
I look at the road, far ahead, down that way. 
Nothing happens to me, as I am a spirit. 
I am a spirit, as I go on the road my spirit meets the others come towards me. 
I am glad to see them and be with them. 
I have a right to be there. 

I cannot help it; I must leave because the spirit has called me back. 
I must go, I must obey. 
I go direct to my spirit. 

Now I cannot say what they will make of me. 
I may take the form of a cloud; 
I wish I could be a cloud. 
When a cloud comes this way, you will say. “That, that is he!” 
When I get to the place of spirits, I will hear everything you ask. 
You must always remember me.

I am a spirit, and I bless you. 
I am a spirit, and I bless you. 
And I bless you.

2. Orchestral Tone Poem: Journey 

This Tone Poem gives an impression of the journey of the soul towards his ancestors, and on to rebirth and new life. The music is full of vitality, vigour, optimism and warmth, but ends with a sense of unsureness as to what awaits him at journey’s end.

3. Song: Awaiting Dawn

As the soul awaits rebirth, his future mother seeks the son of a god to become the father of the child she wishes for. She discovers his dwelling place in which he sits, silently waiting for her. The unaccompanied choral music depicts the yearning passion of the mother wanting to create new life with her chosen partner.

With the dawn will I seek, seek my child, 
Among the Children seek 
One the Gods shall make; 
My offspring, my own child.

Where is he, the Son? 
Where his dwelling place that I seek? 
Which can be his lodge, where he sits 
Silent, waiting, waiting there for me? 

Here is he, the Son, 
Here his dwelling place that I seek; 
This here is his lodge where he sits 
Silent, waiting, waiting here for me.

4. Summer Dawn 

The poetry of “Summer Dawn” is a highly sensual description of the erotic fantasies and exotic lovemaking which take place prior to the rebirth of souls. The music has a passionate romanticism, at one with the sensuality of the poetry, but at the same time there is a sense of religious divinity and a concentration on the beauty of earthly rituals and acts.

She comes, the maiden who has known love!
Last Night Love touched her in the house of waiting.
Love hid the seeds of life in her garments.
In the wind of her walking they are scattered;
All the sod will bloom with them!
None shall be lost: because of her gladness, the gladness of love known.

She sees the earth not as we see it.
We who were not overtaken by Love in the house of waiting.

Wake, women, maidens, wives!
Greet the maiden!
Greet her with feet dancing,
With songs of the heart and lips trembling to silence,
Hands that lift their wonder to the breast
Yet touch not the flesh.

Wake, sons, lovers, young chiefs, hunters with arrows!
Sharpen the darts, make strong, bend the bow;
Keen as light, and clear as the wind be your eyes!
The women await you in secret places
They have hidden themselves in leafy shelters:
All the green leagues of the forest are ashake with invitation.

The quick beating of their hearts is the whisper along the bending grass.
The sod grows warm, O men, Summer-dawn is the spirit of the women!

They have washed their hearts with prayer,
And their bodies with juices of cedar:
Perfumed and dried by the wind they have come up from the shore –
The great hosts of the women –
Unwrapping themselves from the mists of the morning,
They have entered the forest with the footfalls of muted music,
With light tossing steps like the spray on long beaches.
The swinging trees drip dew:
With lines of sparkling rain they point the way the women have gone,
Leaving all the paths to them open.

Harken! They follow the maiden, singing: 
“Come, come, O swift and strong! 
We are the women: seek us! 
Our hearts, like little swallows, nest above the secret pools. 
O say, shall not the winged dart pierce? 
And the shadow of the bended bow 
Stir the still, deep pools? 
O the waters shall sparkle and leap and mingle, 
And brim at your lips, O men! 
They shall be poured out and dip upon a chiefs feet; 
They shall fill the hollows of his house with children! 
Flowing in laughter and whispers and little cries 
As smoke through the smoke-hole at evening! 
Women! Waken the soil with freshets; 
Bear joy upward as a canoe with sails, swifter than paddles. 
O men, hunters of life, 
We are the harborers, the fosterers – the women: 
Seek us!” 

It was the women, the harborers, the fosterers, who rose first, 
And followed the maiden, 
They called to the men. 

The men go forth like one! 
Lightening and heat are their weapons, hurled crashing before them. 
Their hair, spreading wide, gives black wings to the sun, 
As a cloud filled with eagles blown up from the sea. 

They enter the forest; 
And the song of women is stilled. 
The cry of offering ascends, it passes the swooping shadows; 
There is a sigh through the forest of winds sinking –
Then the hush 

On the leaves is a sweet whisper of rain, 
Whispered sweetness of pangs past. 
The warm soil drinks the coolness of tears –
Tears that are dropping melodies. 
The skies part, the blackwings fold;
The Sun chief’s canoe rides on the upper blue with furled sails 
The maiden, laughing, is at the paddle, 
Our village is drenched with light. 
The maiden is glad because love has overtaken us; 
Because now we see the earth as she sees it. 
Two by two, they come from the forest, the men and the women. 
The women’s smiles are the little suntipped clouds. 
Floating across the face of the mountain: 
The look in their eyes is deeper then seas. 
High in the light the men lift their heads. 
On their clear brows is the mystic mark 
Of those from whom a great dream has gone forth. 
Firmly they hold the hands of the women, 
Who have giv’n peace to their strength, 
Together, together, the race-makers enter the lodges.

End of Part One

PART TWO

5. Orchestral Tone Poem: Kitchi-Manitou 

This describes the feeling of undisturbed, strong continuity often associated with Kitchi-Manitou, the chief god of many Native American societies. The music depicts an idea of mystery and quiet grandeur, but becomes warm, comforting and welcoming as the soul is purified prior to his rebirth in the earthly plane.

6. Invocation

The finale invites the people to thank their god for the continuous cycle of life and nature, and for all the life­giving beauties of the living Earth all around them. The Sun-Father (Kitchi-Manitou) appears, far off. to give blessing to all who belong to his wonderful creation. The music is warm and giving, dedicated to all who remain an integral part of the living Earth, but who have ceased their pointless, destructive quest to own and control it.

Come you, ascend the ladder, all come in, all sit down. 
We were poor, … poor 
When we came to this world through the poor place, 
Where the body of water dried for our passing. 
Banked up clouds cover the earth. 
All come four times with your showers, 
Descend to the base of the ladder and stand still; 
Bring your showers and great rains. 
All come, all ascend, all come in, all sit down. 

I throw out to you my sacred meal that you may all come. 
Hold your gaming-stick; throw it forwards; all come. 
Give us your showers and great rains; all come, 
That the seeds may be strong and come up, that all seed plants may come up, 
That all the seed plants may come up and be strong. 
Come you that all trees and seeds may come up and be strong. 
Come you hither; all come. 

Cover my earth mother four times with many flowers. 
Let the heavens be covered with banked up clouds. 
Let the earth be covered with fog; cover the earth with rains. 
Great waters, rains, cover the earth. Lightening cover the earth. 
Let thunder be heard over the earth; let thunder be heard; 
Let thunder be heard over the six regions of the earth. 

Rain-makers, come out from all roads that great rivers may cover the earth; 
That stones may be moved by the torrents; 
That trees may be uprooted and moved by the torrents. 
Great rain-makers, come out from all ·roads, carry the sands of our earth mother of the place. 
Cover the earth with her hearts, that all seeds may develop, 
That my children may have all things to eat and be happy; 
That the people of the outlying villages may all laugh and be Happy; 
That the growing children may all have things to eat and be happy. 
This way our great father wishes you to come. 
This way our great mother wishes you to come. 
That we may have all kinds of seeds and all things good; 
That we may inhale the sacred breath of life; 
That our fathers and our mothers may bring us happy days. 
Let our children live and be happy. 
Send us the good south winds. 
Send us your breath over the lakes that our great world may be made beautiful and our people may live. 

There, far off, my Sun Father rises, my Sun Father rises, 
my Sun Father rises, ascends the ladder, comes forth from his place. 
May all complete the road of life, may all grow old. 
May the children inhale more of the sacred breath of life. 
May all my children have corn that they may complete the road of life. 
Here sit down; here remain; we give you our best thoughts. 
Hasten over the meal road; we are jealous of you. 
We inhale the sacred breath through our prayer plumes.

BIOGRAPHIES

Andrew Downes, Composer 

Andrew Downes was born in Handsworth, Birmingham, in 1950, into a well-known Midlands family of musicians. He won a choral scholarship to St John’s College, Cambridge, where he specialised in composition, and in 1974 went on to study at the Royal College of Music with Herbert Howells, who wrote of him as ‘one of the most effective composers coming to me these days’. His emergence as a leading international composer was combined with a strong academic profile as an innovative and inspired educator: he created and was Head of the School of Composition and Creative Studies at the Birmingham School of Music (now Royal Birmingham Conservatoire) for 30 years, and following his retirement, devoted himself solely to composition. His output includes an opera, six symphonies, numerous concertos and chamber works, song cycles, piano music and a large body of choral and sacred music. 

Over 30 CDs of his music have been issued on a range of labels. His numerous commissions included The Marshes of Glynn, for the Royal Opening of Birmingham’s Adrian Boult Hall in 1986; the overture In the Cotswolds for the opening concert of the Three Choirs Festival; song cycles for Sarah Walker and John Mitchinson, both premièred on BBC Radio 3; anthems (Opus 31, Nos 1, 2 and 3) for the BBC Radio 4 Daily Service; and the overture Towards a New Age, premièred by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at Symphony Hall, Birmingham. Downes’s Concerto for Four Horns and Orchestra was commissioned for and premièred by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra in the Dvorak Hall, Prague, in 2002, and recorded by Czech Radio the following year. His Sonata for Violin, Horn and Piano was premièred by the Brahms Trio Prague at the Suk Hall of the Rudolfinum, Prague, in 2008, and subsequently released on the Czech Philharmonic’s Artesmon label. Downes’s Piano and Horn Concertos were premiered at Birmingham Town Hall in 2009 and 2012 respectively. In 2016, the Artesmon label released a disk set of Downes’ Symphonies and Overtures, recorded by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra in the Rudolfinum, Prague, under Ondřej Vrabec. 

He died on January 2nd 2023, leaving a legacy of over 120 works. A prolific composer, he wrote every day until the last week of his life. 
Duncan Honeybourne, 2026

David Trippett, Conductor 

David Trippett is Chair of the Faculty of Music at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Christ’s College. 

As a pianist and conductor, he has performed within Europe, the UK, in China, and on both coasts of America in venues from the Liszt Academy in Budapest and the Britten-Pears Festival, Aldeburgh to the Shanghai Conservatory and the Library of Congress in Washington DC. 

As a scholar, his research focuses on nineteenth-century music and intellectual history, Richard Wagner, and the history of science. He is author of Wagner’s Melodies (2013), editor and translator of Carl Stumpf, The Origins of Music (2012), and more recently he co-edited The Cambridge Companion to Music in Digital Culture (2019), Nineteenth-Century Opera and the Scientific Imagination (2019), and Wagner in Context (2024). Awards for research include the Alfred Einstein and Lewis Lockwood Prizes of the American Musicological Society, the Bruno Nettl Prize of Society for Ethnomusicology, and a Philip Leverhulme Prize. Between 2015-2020, he directed a project on ‘Sound and Materialism in the Nineteenth Century’, funded by the European Research Council, and is publishing a book arising from this, Sound in Mind and Body

Paula Downes, Soprano

Paula Downes was a choral scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge, and a member of the National Youth Choir of Great Britain. She has since sung with The Sixteen, Philharmonia Voices, The Handel and Haydn Society, and Emmanuel Music. As a soloist, she has sung with numerous Choral Societies and Orchestras in the UK and USA, including performances under Stephen Cleobury in King’s Chapel, Cambridge, and under Sarah MacDonald in St John’s Smith Square, London. She has also recorded as a soloist with the Firebird Ensemble in Boston, USA, for Navona Records, has performed opera roles for Opera East Productions and for the Thomas Hardy Festival, and has performed as a recitalist with her husband David Trippett, in venues including Harvard University, MIT Chapel, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and The National Portrait Gallery, London. Most recently, Paula has recorded the soprano solo roles in Three Dramatic Cantatas by Andrew Downes with the Choir of Robinson College, Cambridge, under Will Sims for Prima Facie Records. Paula is a regular dep with Ely Cathedral Choir, where her two daughters are choristers, and she is Creative Director for Lynwood Music, publishers and promoters of her late father, Andrew Downes.

Eleanor Minney, Mezzo Soprano

Eleanor Minney is a British Mezzo Soprano with a fine reputation for her interpretation of the Baroque and early oratorio repertoire, with many concert performances and recordings of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, St. John Passion, B Minor Mass and Magnificat, Handel’s Messiah and Dixit Dominus, and Monteverdi’s Vespers in the UK, Europe and the USA.

Other performance highlights include the World Premiere of Sir John Tavener’s The Beautiful Names with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Copland’s In the Beginning with The Sixteen, Cherubino in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro and Fanny Price in Dove’s Mansfield Park (both Hampstead Garden Opera), Mercedes in Bizet’s Carmen (Riverside Opera), Ruggiero in Handel’s Alcina (Musica Poetica),  Ninfa/Proserpina in Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (I Fagiolini), and Friend in the World Premiere of Ravi Shankhar’s Sukanya (Royal Opera). 

In addition to her solo work, Eleanor appears regularly with a number of highly acclaimed ensembles including Tenebrae, The OAE, London Voices, and Polyphony. She is proud to have been on the staff roster of the BBC Singers from 2014-2024, with whom she continues to collaborate.

Samuel Boden, Tenor

British tenor Samuel Boden enjoys an international career in opera and concert, with particular distinction in early and contemporary repertoire. Acclaimed for his interpretations of Monteverdi, Bach, Handel, French baroque composers and Britten, he is especially noted for his clarity, elegance and musical sensitivity.

Samuel created the roles of Boy and Young King in George Benjamin’s Lessons in Love and Violence at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, later reprising them in Amsterdam, Hamburg, Lyon and Barcelona. He has sung the title roles in Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo and Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice for Nederlandse Reisoper, Rameau’s Platée at Garsington Opera and Idamante in Campra’s Idoménée in Lille and Berlin. Other notable appearances include Oronte in Alcina (Karlsruhe Handel Festival), the Poet in Thomas Larcher’s The Hunting Gun (Aldeburgh), Anthony in Sweeney Todd (Bergen National Opera), and the title role in Acis and Galatea (Buxton Festival). A Purcell specialist, he has appeared in The Indian Queen at Opera Ballet Vlaanderen and The Fairy Queen at Drottningholms Slottsteater.

He collaborates regularly with leading period ensembles, including Collegium Vocale Gent (Philippe Herreweghe), Le Concert d’Astrée (Emmanuelle Haïm), Les Arts Florissants (William Christie), Les Musiciens du Louvre (Marc Minkowski), and The English Concert (Harry Bicket). He has also performed with the Bavarian Radio Symphony, BBC Symphony, Scottish Chamber, Frankfurt Radio and Mahler Chamber Orchestras among others.

His recordings span works by Monteverdi, Rameau, Charpentier and Bach, as well as contemporary composers George Benjamin, Alec Roth and Tansy Davies.

Samuel trained at Trinity Laban Conservatoire.

Simon Grant, Baritone

Simon Grant is a baritone based in London who has often sung with choirs such as Tenebrae, The Sixteen, Sansara, and Ensemble Pro Victoria, as well as freelance solo engagements around the country. He has recently been appointed as the baritone of the Gesualdo Six. He was a choral scholar at St John’s Cambridge, and before that he was a choral scholar at Truro Cathedral. In Cambridge he sang premieres of both consort and solo work by composers such as Jeremy Thurlow (Over the Frost for six voices, flute and harp, and the solo song cycle The world in scent and touch), and in London he was a founding member of the Hexad Collective, regularly premiering work by the group’s singer-composers Anna Semple and Piers Connor Kennedy. 

Philharmonia Voices

Philharmonia Orchestra

1ST VIOLIN	VIOLA
Jonathan Stone	Rebecca Chambers
Philip Brett	Christine Anderson
Karin Tilch	Cameron Campbell
Adrián Varela	Joe Ichinose
Soong Choo	Anna Growns
Naori Takahashi	Raquel Lopez Bolivar
Jane Kim	Mabon Rhyd
Joonas Pekonen	Miguel Sobral Gonçalves Sobrinho
Arda Karakaya	Joseph Fisher
Coco Inman	Mariya Sotirova
Rebecca Chan	Sylvain Séailles
Victoria Irish	Pamela Ferriman
Peter Fisher	CLARINET
Alberto Vidal	Mark van de Wiel
June Lee	Nicholas Rodwell
BASS	Jennifer McLaren
Enno Senft	BASS CLARINET
Ryan Smith	Duncan Gould
Lowri Morgan	CONTRA BASSOON
Ketan Curtis	Steve Magee
Emma Prince	BASS TROMBONE
Jan Zahourek	Edward Hilton
William Puhr	Alan Swain
Imogen Fernando	TROMBONE
James Trowbridge	Byron Fulcher
Lewis Reid	Roger Cutts
TRUMPET	Philip White
Toby Street	Dafydd Thomas
Gerry Ruddock	David Jackson
Christian Barraclough	GUITAR
TUBA	Steve Smith
Ben Thomson	Nigel Woodhouse
2ND VIOLIN	CELLO
Julian Gil Rodriguez	Karen Stephenson
Nuno Carapina	Eric Villeminey
Gideon Robinson	Silvestrs Kalniņš
Julian Milone	Nina Kiva
Ilhem Ben Khalfa	Gillian Bragg
Susan Bowran	Wallis Power
Emma Martin	Abi Hyde-Smith
Miya Vaisanen	Sam Weinstein
Juliette Roos	Jonathan Fong
Nicola Hutchings	Anna Crawford
Ikuko Sunamura	Morwenna Del Mar
Jonathan Rees	Gilly McMullin
Laurent Quenelle	Madeleine Ridd
Tom Aldren	HORN
Anna Brigham	Oliver Johnson
Alfredo Reyes Logounova	Kira Doherty
FLUTE	Jake Parker
Karen Jones	Carsten Williams
June Scott	Jonathan Durrant
PICCOLO	Nicholas Korth
Robert Looman (dbl)	Jo Withers
OBOE	TIMPANI
Gordon Hunt	Mark McDonald (dbl)
Vanessa Howells	PERCUSSION
BASSOON	Neil Percy (dbl)
Paul Boyes	Owen Gunnell (dbl)
Laura Vincent	Barnaby Archer (dbl)
D TRUMPET
Jonathan Holland
Paul Sharp
James Fountain

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Credits

Recorded in Alexandra Palace, 16-17 March 2024
Producer – Myles Eastwood
Engineer – Mike Hatch
Assistant engineers – Caitlin Pittol-Neville, George Collins
Photos – Matthew Johnson