A time to .... grow - Jeffrey's 2011-12 season message

Ex Cathedra’s national and international profile continues to grow following last year’s highly praised concerts at the Royal Opera House, St John’s Smith Square and Cadogan Hall, in Champagne, in Edinburgh, and culminating in a standing ovation in New York.

This new season sees us travelling to Gregynog in Wales, Perugia in Italy, Varaždin in Croatia and Guangzhou in China. There will be concerts in Newbury, Shrewsbury, Chipping Campden, Warwick, Sherborne, and four in London including Spitalfields, and Canary Wharf.

Collaborations continue to be a major part of our work. With Birmingham Royal Ballet we will present six performances of Carmina Burana and 22 Nutcrackers! The brilliant Scottish pianist Steven Osborne will join us for an inspiring Rachmaninov programme and we will work with composers Betsy Jolas and John Woolrich at Dartington International Summer School. Our own ‘composer in residence’ Alec Roth has been commissioned to write two new works: one by Ex Cathedra and the other by the Summer Music Society of Dorset which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. We will also collaborate with His Majestys Sagbutts and Cornetts and Concerto Palatino, two world-class early music ensembles who both celebrate important anniversaries in 2012.

Singing is a fundamental human need and our ever growing work in the community feeds our conviction that Ex Cathedra is a comprehensive arts organisation which touches everyone. We are working with Music of Life, Rosetta Life and Sing for All: Community Spirit at Town Hall, and taking Singing Medicine to Heartlands Hospital in addition to Birmingham Children’s Hospital. We are exploring collaborations with CBSO, BCMG, the Shakespeare Institute, Ikon Gallery and Villa Park, and we still aim to introduce Singing Playgrounds into every school in Birmingham, if not the whole region!

The heart of our work is our annual season in Birmingham. The excellence of this work is of course central to everything else we do. I am very excited about this year’s programme which includes a concert devoted to each of five composers who have figured significantly in Ex Cathedra’s development - Gabrieli, Vivaldi, Bach, Rachmaninov, and Alec Roth.

We celebrate the 400th anniversary of Giovanni Gabrieli’s death in Venice in 1612. His sumptuous compositions for several choirs of instruments and voices demonstrate the power of music to inspire communities through civic, religious and state ceremonies. This music is the original 5.1 surround sound!

Much of Vivaldi’s Vespers sequence features on Ex Cathedra’s first CD recorded in 1991. It continues to fill me with joy and not a little pride.

The music of Bach features in two concerts in Birmingham, and in Sherborne Abbey his Magnificat will be partnered by a new work composed for our singers and ‘period’ orchestra by Alec Roth - A Time to Dance which sets texts from John Donne and Ecclesiastes. Writing new music for ‘old’ instruments is a tall order but one which I know Alec will meet, with his extraordinary awareness of subtle colours, textures, patterns and delicate sonorities.

Alec Roth is the fifth composer in our season. The Rivered Earth celebrates a long awaited new publication by best-selling Indian writer Vikram Seth, and features three works by Alec written for Ex Cathedra: Hymn to Gaia (a new commission), Earthrise and Shared Ground. These three commissions will feature on our new CD to be released in the Autumn. They reflect the human response to planet earth.

The earth’s two solstices now each have their own traditional concerts – there will be nine Christmas Music by Candlelight concerts this winter and a new version: Early Christmas Music by Candlelight. Summer Vespers has the title A Whole New World. Time stands still in these reflective compilations of music from around the world, performed in one of Birmingham’s most beautiful and historic churches, lit only by candlelight.

Ex Cathedra is adjusting to inevitable cutbacks; we have always been prudent, but we continue to grow and I believe we are set to move into our golden age. There is clearly so much potential for growth and the opportunity to show that through culture, and fundamentally through singing, we can achieve a happy, creative, productive, and healthy place in which to live. Please continue to support our work and tell your friends about our forthcoming season. They will enjoy it too!