Eagles, Birdsongs and Bach, June 4 2025
Wednesday June 4 2024, 7.30pm
St Thomas’ Church
Part of Salisbury International Arts Festival
Tickets from £26, available here
When in the hands of virtuoso recorder player Piers Adams, the ‘Eagle’ recorder becomes a new symphonic instrument. Designed, built and perfected by the late Adriana Breukink, the ‘Eagle’ has forged a path of new possibility for the recorder, allowing it to soar away from its baroque roots. Ever since first hearing Piers play the ‘Eagle’, it has been a dream for Howard Moody to write a concerto for it, combining Bach’s orchestral line up of trumpets, drums, oboes, harpsichord and strings with the more modern sound worlds of guitar and saxophone.
This concert places the music of Bach and Vivaldi alongside some of the recently devised music from the La Folia Birdsongs project that involved students from Exeter House and Salisbury Cathedral Schools. The programme culminates with the world premiere of Eagle Concerto.
Evening Songs, July 2 2024
Tuesday July 2 2024, 5.30pm
Salisbury Cathedral
The culmination of our third Evening Songs project, following 6 months of creative workshops. Our Evening Songs services have become a new choral tradition, integrating people with special needs into a Cathedral Choir on an equal footing.
This year the music and words were created by students from Exeter House School, Exeter House Vocational Centre, co-farmers of Able Hands Together and Salisbury Cathedral choristers. All led by musicians Howard Moody, Lynsey Docherty, Mark Padmore, and David Halls.
The History of Evening Songs
It’s hard to express how ground-breaking Evening Songs is: special needs students and choristers together devising new words and melodies. Although the format of the Evensong service remains the same, for the most part the content is original, crafted from the singers’ own experiences and perceptions.
Our Evening Songs service in 2016 saw the ancient words changed for the first time in 700 years of tradition. The precentor leading the service called it:
‘…one of the most, if not the most important thing the cathedral has ever done.’
Click here to watch a video taster of the project
Photo by Ash Mills