MazeMusic brought together, for the first time, the long-established Saffron Walden Choral Society with chamber choir The Granta Chorale and youth choir SignuptoSing. Members of Britten Sinfonia ran composing workshops with A-level students and selected works featured in a concert which featured the Britten Sinfonia with the three choirs and students. The concert celebrated the rich history of Saffron Walden including the premiere of a specially commissioned cantata inspired by the town's historic turf maze and written by Janet Wheeler with libretto by Nick Warburton.
All participants, particularly young people, were encouraged to raise their musical aspirations beyond the high quality music making that already exists in the town.
Saffron Walden Choral Society has strong links with local schools, encouraging choral and instrumental performance and running an annual carol competition. In MazeMusic they supported young composers by offering specialist composition workshops, with the opportunity for students to work alongside professional musicians in the preparation and performance of their own work.
Performers also had the opportunity to develop, with the composer, a new work to be premiered at the concert.
The choral society thus extended its charitable objects 'to promote, improve, develop and maintain public education in and appreciation of the art and science of music in all its aspects' well beyond its regular activity performing major choral works. They hope that the event will prove to be the catalyst for a significant development in the town’s musical life, opening up a new world of musical experience which will be further encouraged by the new concert hall in Saffron Walden due for completion in 2013.
