Birds of Paradise première Edinburgh’s Cadenza Choir commissioned Janet to compose a retirement gift for Jenny Sumerling, who directed the choir for 22 years. With new conductor Tim Coleman, the choir premièred Janet’s setting of Christina Rossetti’s ‘Birds of Paradise’ at Greyfriars Kirk on August 24th in their Edinburgh Fringe Festival concert. The music features aleatoric birdcalls from upper voices layered against a full SATB texture. The organ loft in Greyfriars Kirk made the ideal…
The Choir from the Rodolfus Choral Course sang Janet’s Beati Quorum Via (Homage to Stanford) alongside its Stanford inspiration in their evensong from the Chapel of Royal Holloway. This was recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s Choral Evensong on Wednesday August 14th (repeat – Sunday August 18th).
Janet is delighted to be taking part in this 4-day event in Alnwick, Northumberland, which brings together the arts and sciences to raise awareness of the climate emergency and focus on what we can each do to tackle it. She’ll be leading Sing for the Planet Workshop Sunday 30 June 10am-4:30 pm. The day will build up to a concert by award-winning choir Voices of Hope at 5:30pm, when the Workshop participants will join Voices…
Janet was invited by Britten Sinfonia to take part in the 2023 Opus 1 scheme in which eight composers work with a Britten Sinfonia chamber ensemble over a series of workshops. This was a brilliant opportunity to write for a really unusual ensemble and to receive feedback from the players and mentoring from Dani Howard and Raymond Yiu along the way. It was also great hearing the other composers’ responses to their instrumental line-up. The…
In 673 St Etheldreda founded a double monastery on the site of Ely Cathedral. To mark the 1350th anniversary of this event, the Friends of Ely Cathedral have commissioned Janet to compose a new Ely Service. Janet has used the numbers 673 and 1350 as inspiration for some if the melodic material in the service. It will be sung on June 4th and also on June 21st when it will be broadcast live on BBC…