Always on
This project successfully funded on 27th November 2024, you can still support them with a donation.
The New Winter Songbook
London, Greater London, United Kingdom
Aim: Soprano Rebecca Lea and pianist Caroline Jaya Ratnam curate and record a rich, contemporary songbook project for voice and piano.
Rebecca Lea and Caroline Jaya Ratnam are delighted to be collaborating on The New Winter Songbook Project in 2025.
The New Winter Songbook will be a new song collection for voice and piano written, curated and performed by living composers, poets, community participants, students and professional musicians. The project will oversee the creation of a songbook of repertoire reflecting the diverse ethnicity, cultures, faiths and outlooks of artists and communities living through winter in the UK in the 2020s, reinvigorating the genre of seasonal art song.
The New Winter Songbook project will consist of 4 strands:
1. An album of 8 newly-commissioned songs for voice and piano,
collated alongside up to 14 first recordings of contemporary works by living composers. We are thrilled to commission Michael Betteridge, Anita Datta, Jessica Dannheisser, Sun Keting, Saied Kordmafi, Electra Perivolaris, James Weeks and Heloise Werner to write new songs for the project. These will sit alongside first recordings of works by composers including Michael Csanyi-Wills, Eoghan Desmond, Peter Foggitt, Adam Gorb, Jamie W Hall, Cheryl Frances Hoad, Cecilia McDowall, Helen Neeves, Errollyn Wallen and Judith Weir.
2. A community music project in partnership with East London Music Alliance
and Hanson Community Arts (Kirklees). The first stage will involve song-writing
workshops in February and March 2025, in which young people aged 14 - 19 work with composer-animateurs to explore and devise song material based around the winter season, which our composers will then weave into songs. The second stage will be to teach these new songs to community singers and for these participants to perform them at Songbook launch concerts in Huddersfield and London.
3. A recording and film project from Rebecca and Caroline, released on the Convivium label and on a dedicated New Winter Songbook website. This will feature all of the professionally recorded tracks from the collection, as well as filmed performances of the new songs by participants at concerts in Huddersfield, Manchester and London. The website will also include background information to the songs, links to sheet music and reflections from those involved, creating a significant central resource for communities, artists and programmers.
4. A series of Songbook Launch Concerts across the UK at the end of 2025.
Through The New Winter Songbook, we hope to showcase a wide variety of contemporary UK cultures and communities, celebrating the diversity of both writers and performers. We will encourage artists and communities to explore the well-worn theme of winter afresh, opening up the world of 21st century art song to a wider audience and empowering the communities from which these new songs emanate.
Where are we up to?
Rebecca has been working independently on this project for nearly two years and is delighted to have secured funding support from Arts Council England, The Marcus Trust, Finzi Friends, The Francis Routh Trust and the Hinrichsen Foundation. We are now looking to raise the final £5,000 to get us over the line. We would therefore be grateful for any support from those who would like to contribute to helping us deliver this unique project in style!