The strings of the Northern Chords Festival Orchestra under the baton of Jonathan Bloxham (pictured) present a concert of favourite English classics. Purcell’s ‘Chacony’, in Britten’s famous arrangement, Elgar’s beautiful Serenade, and two famous excerpts from William Walton’s music for the Laurence Olivier-starring film, Henry V – ‘Passacaglia’ and ‘Touch Her Soft Lips’. Their concert culminates in Finzi’s masterful cantata, Dies Natalis, to words by Thomas Traherne, sung by the tenor Ben Johnson.

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London Unwrapped
Sounds of a Migrant City | Throughout 2021

London has been a melting pot since its earliest days, both a place of refuge, a glittering cultural nexus, the most cosmopolitan of all British cities. This year-long series aims to delve into four hundred years of London’s musical past, with its dazzling display and troubling undercurrents, its openness, opportunities and barriers. The series highlights a music story that always been driven forward, disrupted, shaped and inspired by outsiders and immigrant communities, and showcases the diversity of creativity in the city today. Featuring artists in residence Iestyn Davies and Cassie Kinoshi, Allan Clayton, Elena Urioste, Aurora Orchestra, The Sixteen, Phantasm and many more.