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made
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PROGRAMME
Daniel Pinkham In the Beginning of Creation
On the sixth
Nathan James Dearden without
They came, they saw, they wandered
Trad. arr. Robin Wallington Four Loom Weaver
He didn’t come home
Paul Mealor Peace
Alan saw it all
Sarah Keirle-Dos Santos Mechanism (commissioned by Kantos)
Sibling Rivalry
Richard Rodgers arr. Jeff Funk Blue Moon
Trad. arr. Charlie Perry Glory Glory Man United & Manchester United Calypso
My daughters stand on the shoulders of giants
Ethel Smyth arr. Frances M Lynch March of the Women
Light/House
Alex Groves Stream & Pool
No Words
John Tavener Mother Of God, Here I Stand
I AM MUSIC
The Source arr. Charlie Perry You Got the Love
Manchester is not soup + Charlie Perry Mosaic
Ewan MacColl arr. Charlie Perry Dirty Old Town
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Conductor Ellie Slorach
Spoken Word ARGH KiD (David Scott)
Programme Notes
Welcome to Manchester, remixed: KANTOS X ARGH KiD
From the electricity of the derby to the late-night beats of Canal Street, from Turing’s silent genius to Pankhurst’s fearless pursuits. Join us for a mash-up of choral music, electronics and spoken word for an event that gives the city’s story a unique soundtrack.
Daniel Pinkham In the Beginning of Creation
Daniel Pinkham (1923–2006) was a composer, organist and harpsichordist who was born in Massachusetts. In the Beginning of Creation sets the text of Genesis 1:1-3 for mixed choir and electronic tape. The extended vocal techniques and evocative sounds of the tape interact to paint each sentence of new creation vividly and with intensity.
On the sixth
Nathan James Dearden without
‘without’ is the fourth of five choral works from Nathan James Dearden’s set: Morals + Interludes:
‘Over recent years I have increasingly become obsessed with the ‘everyday’. Perhaps the onslaught of technology and having to continually exaggerate our ‘mundane’ lives on social media have meant that we can no longer turn our heads away from the wider world (and arguably, neither should we). It is all there.
This has become even more important in recent times, as we find ourselves digitising our entire lives; from the work we do, to the socialising we need, to quite literally the only way many can communicate with one another – in this ‘chaos’ of the virtual. However, I am beginning to discover, as many are, that this is also an important time for reflection. Perhaps this is an essential moment of our lives for repose, as we (quite literally) live with our own thoughts and dealing with not only the mundane but even the existential. A reflection on the past and the future and where we fit in within both, whilst being immortalised digitally.
In collaboration with the singers of the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain Fellowship, Morals + Interludes is a series of choral reflections on our relationship with our digital selves. Using ‘virtual memories’ from our own lives, from old home movies to snapshots from our social media personas and personal blogs, we have created five short postcards inspired by these lived experiences with the aim of finding either joy or unexpected profundity behind these snapshots. From the mundane to the moving, we held a mirror up to ourselves, discovering the moral behind each of our stories and the interludes that permeate our everyday.
This work was completed whilst on residence at The Red House (Aldeburgh, UK), as supported by Britten Pears Arts. The title of the work was inspired by Alfred W. Pollard's ‘English Miracle Plays, Moralities, and Interludes’, a collection of surviving Chester mystery plays, from which one inspired Benjamin Britten's ‘Noye's Fludde’.’
-Nathan James Dearden
They came, they saw, they wandered
Trad. arr. Robin Wallington Four Loom Weaver
The Four-Loom Weaver is one of the most dramatic British Industrial songs, believed to have originated in Oldham. This ballad was first sung shortly after The Battle of Waterloo, when handloom weavers' wages fell to a new low. Referring to the Lancashire Cotton Famine, this song of desperation and starvation is moving and poignant, reflecting the devastating years when the once most prosperous workers in Britain, became the most impoverished.
He didn’t come home
Paul Mealor Peace
Written for the wedding of friends of the composer, Peace is a beautiful setting by Paul Mealor of the well-known prayer of St Francis of Assisi.
Alan saw it all
Sarah Keirle-Dos Santos Mechanism (commissioned by Kantos)
Mechanism is written for KANTOS Chamber Choir’s 10th anniversary season concert, Made in Manchester. It features text from the poem ALAN SAW IT ALL by Manchester poet ARGH KiD (David Scott), which explores the extraordinary mind and troubled life of the mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing. Alan Turing lived in Manchester from 1948 until his death, where he worked at the University of Manchester and contributed to the development of early computers. The electronics you hear feature recordings of the BABY at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester. The BABY is a replica of the world's first stored-program computer built at the University of Manchester in 1948. You will hear clicks, switches, dials, and the distorted sounds of the computer running a program.
Sibling Rivalry
Richard Rodgers arr. Jeff Funk Blue Moon
Blue Moon is a popular song, written in 1934 by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, that has become a standard ballad. It has been covered by many artists, including Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and Ella Fitzgerald. For Manchester City supporters, however, Blue Moon has a particularly special meaning! Adopted by fans in the late 1980s, the song gradually became the club’s unofficial anthem. This arrangement is for a capella choir, and kicks off the first of our ‘Manchester Derby’ team songs…
Trad. arr. Charlie Perry Glory Glory Man United & Manchester United Calypso
Who is the biggest club in Manchester? Not for me to decide, but safe to say that music and football are wonderfully entwined regardless of where your loyalties lie. You swap the word ‘hallelujah’ for ‘Man United’ but you don’t lose the Civil War feeling (the original tune dating back to the American one). The Calypso was written by Trinidadian singer Edric Connor in 1956, and celebrates the team’s golden generation of ‘Busby Babes’ (named after manager Matt Busby). The song became one of the first proper football club songs commercially recorded, paving the way for others to do the same.
My daughters stand on the shoulders of giants
Ethel Smyth arr. Frances M Lynch The March of the Women
Ethel Smyth (1858–1944) was a pioneering English composer and a leading figure in the women’s suffrage movement. Her works span opera, orchestral, chamber, and choral music. Smyth composed The March of the Women in 1910, to words by Cicely Hamilton, and dedicated it to the Women’s Social and Political Union; it quickly became the official anthem of the Suffragettes. It was first performed on 21 January 1911, by the Suffrage Choir, at a ceremony held on Pall Mall, London, to celebrate a release of activists from prison. This arrangement, by Frances M Lynch, is set for the sopranos and altos of the choir only.
Light/House
Alex Groves Stream & Pool
Stream and Pool is a love song and a testament to the many powerful, unseen forces that act on us within our relationships. Calm surfaces belie strong currents and small ripples are weathered by endless tides. The text is drawn from Stream and Pool by Michael Field - the pseudonym for poets and lovers Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper. The images and descriptions of water in the poem are at first abstracted completely, before being contextualised and eventually stripped away for the more human elements of the poem. Stream and Pool was written for EXAUDI and premièred by them in Milton Court Concert Hall at the Barbican Centre on Monday 16th May, 2022.
Stream and Pool - Michael Field
Mine is the eddying foam and the broken current.
Thine the serene-flowing tide, the unshattered rhythm;
Light touches me on the surface with glints of sunshine.
Dives in thy bosom disclosing a mystic river:
Ruffling, the wind takes the crest of my waves resurgent.
Stretches his pinions at poise on thy even ripples:
What is my song but the tumult of chafing forces.
What is thy silence. Beloved, but enchanted music!
No Words
John Tavener Mother Of God, Here I Stand
Sir John Tavener (1944–2013) was an English composer who wrote mostly choral religious works. Deeply influenced by his conversion to the Orthodox Church in 1977, much of his music is rooted in sacred tradition and characterised by simplicity and stillness. Mother of God, Here I Stand was composed in 2003 as part of Tavener’s monumental work The Veil of the Temple, an overnight vigil written for the Temple Church in London. The text is a prayer by the Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841), addressed to the Virgin Mary with devotion. Tavener sets it with quiet, homophonic choral textures that unfold in slow phrases.
I AM MUSIC
The Source arr. Charlie Perry You Got the Love
A Hacienda classic. This arrangement is an attempt to capture the euphoria of a night out in Manchester, while keeping sight of the fact that its origins are in Soul and Gospel. Hopefully you can feel the expectation as the sound unfolds itself to the song’s drop, and share in the power of the human voices belting out this track’s sheer joy.
Manchester is not soup + Charlie Perry Mosaic
The whole feeling of this short bit of underscore is in debt to ArghKid’s kaleidoscopic words - my aim was to capture the buzz, the headiness, the spontaneity and the grit of this city, as distilled in this text. The music is quasi-improvised and always follows the words: each singer essentially does their own unique thing within a larger musical cell, reflecting the colourful and apt ‘mosaic’ image in David’s words.
Ewan MacColl arr. Charlie Perry Dirty Old Town
Dirty Old Town is one of the most romantic songs ever written. The love interest in this case is the city of Salford as it was to Ewan McColl in the 1940s: postwar, dirty, smoky, still Victorian but beautiful and evocative. This arrangement attempts to capture the romance and remind us of the human stories that are contained in the larger story of Manchester. People still meet their loved ones by the canal; trains still rattle past; clouds (usually grey) drift by and we love this Dirty Old Town because of, and in spite of it.
THE CHOIR
SOPRANOS
Emily Brown Gibson
Eleonore Cockerham
Alaw Grug Evans
Sarah Keirle-Dos Santos
Dominique Saulnier
ALTOS
Louise Ashdown
Lorna Day
Toluwani Idowu
Lucy Vallis
TENORS
Robin Morton
Charlie Perry
Louis de Satgé
Joseph Taylor
BASS
James Connolly
Henry Page
Edmund Phillips
Henry Saywell
THE TEAM
Managing Director Claire Shercliff
Creative Director Ellie Slorach
Communications & Audience Officer Ailsa Burns
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