Durham Singers summer concert 'Our World'

Durham Singers

For their summer concert, the Durham Singers we return to our year-long theme of Creation and Light, with music from the last 150 years that reflects upon the world around us, and our own place in the world.
Aaron Copland’s In the Beginning tells the creation story straight from Genesis, in a big-hearted style that evokes the open spaces of the American landscape. Copland summons up creation with an expansive mezzo-soprano solo which will be sung by Marnie Blair, a recent Durham graduate and member of Genesis Sixteen and Samling Academy.
Much nearer to home, we are looking forward to giving a second performance of The Light by Durham composer Janet Graham. Judith Weir’s setting of a true blue dream of sky by e.e. cummings is a dreamy reminiscence, a soprano solo floating dizzyingly above the chorus. The concert also features a piece by Weir for solo organ, Wild Mossy Mountains, played by Francesca Massey, sub-organist of Durham Cathedral and the choir's assistant conductor.
In the second half of the programme Brahms and Finzi reflect on our emotional connection to nature in beautiful partsongs that look back through nature to the memory of summer days. Finally, in a ravishing and rarely-heard major work, The House of the Mind, Howells reflects on our search to make a home, within our own minds, for ‘the infinite creator’.