The New Winter Songbook

A couple of years ago, soprano Rebecca Lea asked me if I had any unrecorded songs about winter, for a new disc she was thinking about.  It so happened that I did: this was a tiny haiku collection, On White Meadows, extracted from the text of Die Wintereisse. I pinged the score over to her and thought not much more about it.

Two years later: the now double album of 21 songs by a huge range of contemporary composers, and a print songbook of all the music (most of it new, and commissioned) was launched this week at St Giles Cripplegate, in a fabulous recital by Rebecca and pianist Caroline Jaya-Ratnam. The project had also involved various outreach groups, and indeed one of my favourite of the songs, by Anita Datta, was accompanied by a group of young people from east London.

I wondered how two such busy all-round musicians could have done all this ! And it's been a long time since I've heard such a well-informed survey of the incredibly wide new music scene we have today (ie "curated" by proper musicians who actually perform the stuff all the time.)

PICTURED: St Alphage London Wall, molto misterioso, seen on my unusually extended trek (because roadworks) to St Giles Cripplegate.