We are very excited to announce the first fruits of our Open Space Aldeburgh Music residencies: a concert in Orford Church at 3pm on Easter Sunday, entitled 'The Leipzig Connection'.  The programme features Easter cantatas by J.S. Bach and his predecessor as Thomaskantor in Leipzig, Johann Kuhnau.  The music varies from focusing on the death of Christ ('Christ lag in Todesbanden' BWV 4), to the full glory of Easter, with trumpets blazing and drums throbbing (Kuhnau's 'Wenn ihr fröhlich seid an euren Festen'). 

Solomon's Knot will assume its largest formation in recent times, with 10 singers and 19 instrumentalists.  The singers will perform from memory, and the concert should have a similar impact to the recent chamber Christmas Oratorio.

Tickets are selling fast, though there are some left, available here. 

We're really looking forward to seeing you there.

We’re very excited to start this year with new relationships with two academic institutions, as well as continuing to build on our previous ones. 

This Wednesday we return to the Prendergast schools in Lewisham with another workshop focusing on vocal music – this time we’ll be looking deeply into the chorus from Messiah, ‘And the glory of the Lord’, which is a GCSE set work.  One of Solomon’s Knot’s main aims is to brings vocal music closer to people, and there will be eight of us there to sing it with the students and really see how Handel put it together.

A few weeks ago we were in residence at Goldsmith’s College to perform a lecture-concert at the symposium “Safeguarding the Intangible: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Music and Heritage” in collaboration with Naomi Matsumoto, a musicologist with whom we have been working over the last few years with a view to mounting a staged production of the anonymous ‘dramma burlesco’, Lo spedale.   More on that anon...

Finally, this Friday we shall be performing the musical sections of a very interesting piece, a Jesuit drama from 1698 Vienna called Mulier fortis, which describes the life and death of the 16th-century Japanese Jesuit martyr Gracia Hosokawa, as part of the conference ‘Changing Hearts: Performing Jesuit Emotions between Europe, Asia, and the Americas’, which is being organised by the University of Western Australia, and hosted by Trinity College, Cambridge.  The singers of Solomon’s Knot will assume such roles as Fury, Cruelty, Regret, Adversity and Constancy.  Pretty much what we have to deal with on a daily basis then!