Part of the Sound of St Martin’s Series
A limited number of under-30s tickets for £5 are available for this concert. Please enquire in person at the box office.
Programme
An exciting programme of music for Holy Week featuring the world première of celebrated composer Will Todd’s Passion Music, for choir, and Jazz ensemble.
Allegri – Miserere
Tallis – Lamentations of Jeremiah (Part 1)
Stainer – God so loved the world
Sanders – The Reproaches
Chilcott – Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Will Todd – Passion Music (World Première)
Performers
St Martin’s Chorus
Choral Scholars of St Martin-in-the-Fields
Will Todd Ensemble
Andrew Earis Conductor
Will Todd Conductor
St Martin’s Chorus is the newest choir at St Martin-in-the-Fields. It is an engaging and aspirational chamber choir, drawing from a pool of around thirty singers, performing both major choral works and more intimate, small-scale works. Recent concerts include Mendelssohn Elijah, Brahms Requiem, Rachmaninov Vespersand Copland In the Beginning.
The Choral Scholars of St Martin-in-the-Fields have an essential musical role at St Martin-in-the-Fields. Each year ten scholars – many of whom are music college students or graduates – are appointed to sing midweek choral services during term time. They also gain concert experience through our lunchtime and evening concert series, and benefit from an extensive programme of training in different aspects of church and choral music.
The Will Todd Ensemble recorded the iconic CD of the full band version of Will Todd’s Mass in Blue for the Signum label and draws on some of the top jazz and session musicians in the UK. It regularly performs Mass in Blue in concert and has also featured in broadcasts with St Martin’s Voices as well as appearing at jazz venue Pizza Express, Soho. The Will Todd Ensemble regularly perform with Will Todd in concerts of his jazz choral works.
Andrew Earis is Director of Music at St Martin-in-the-Fields, where he oversees the Sound of St Martin’s church music and concert programmes in this busy London church. He is a graduate of the Royal College of Music and Imperial College, London, and holds a PhD from the University of Manchester. In addition to his duties at St Martin’s, Andrew is a regular contributor to BBC Radio and Television’s religious output, as a music advisor, conductor and organist to programmes including Radio 4 Sunday Worship and Daily Service and BBC1 Songs of Praise.
Andrew is an Associate of the Royal College of Organists and Fellow of Trinity College, London and has given organ recitals in venues including King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, Westminster Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and Washington National Cathedral, and has performed as soloist in performance of Poulenc’s Organ Concerto and Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony.
Will Todd’s flagship work is the jazz mass setting Mass in Blue, which has been performed hundreds of times around the world since its 2003 premiere. His anthem The Call of Wisdom was commissioned by St Paul’s Cathedral for the Diamond Jubilee Thanksgiving Service for Queen Elizabeth II in June 2012 and his arrangement of Amazing Grace was performed as part of the BBC Nelson Mandela Thanksgiving Service, and at the private ceremony for President Obama’s second inauguration.
Other notable works include opera The Blackened Man, a prizewinner in the International Verdi Opera Competition; the oratorio Saint Cuthbert, which has been recorded by the Hallé Orchestra; music theatre work The Screams of Kitty Genovese, produced most recently by Tête à Tête Opera in London and Edinburgh; a setting of Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale for Hertfordshire Chorus and the highly acclaimed Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for Opera Holland Park.
Will has worked with many of the UK’s leading ensembles including The Sixteen, The BBC Singers and the BBC Concert Orchestra. He has had a fruitful collaboration with the award-winning chamber choir Tenebrae with whom he has made the two highly acclaimed albums The Call of Wisdom and Lux et Veritas; the latter was voted one of the top 20 albums of 2014 by Classic FM. The album recorded by Opera Holland Park of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland went straight into the specialist classical charts at No 1 in July 2015, and following three sell-out seasons of the show a new indoor production at the Linbury Theatre at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden also sold out in November 2015.
Will wrote his Clarinet Concerto for Emma Johnson, who recorded it with the BBC Concert Orchestra in 2015. Will has also collaborated with celebrated children’s author Michael Rosen to create Lights, Stories, Noise, Dreams, Love and Noodles, a cantata commissioned by David Hill for The Bach Choir.
Will frequently performs as a jazz pianist, leading the Will Todd Ensemble, and enjoys a close working relationship with the chamber choir St Martin’s Voices. Will is a regular visitor to mainland Europe and the US where he is in high demand as a workshop leader and conductor of his own music.
