I am delighted to be invited to lead the 2020 KIconcerts Festival in London. In my experience conducting tours of fine high school, community, collegiate and choirs of faith there is nothing quite like performing repertoire in the country it was first performed, and in the kind of grand spaces it was first heard.
The proposed repertoire for our combined festival choir is Leonard Bernstein’s iconic Chichester Psalms, commissioned for a large festival choir like ours in England, and simultaneously premiered in New York, and thus the perfect music for a cross-Atlantic connection. It also comes at a time when many feel the need more than ever to sing Bernstein’s closing prayer taken from Psalm 133 (Hineh mah tov…): “How good it is for brothers and sisters to dwell together in unity.”
I welcome you to join this journey as we perform individually and as a combined choir in London and then in Edinburgh for those who wish to join us there. Choirs also have the option to stay in London a day or two for further individual concerts and touring, or travel further afield through the UK.
I am thrilled that this will be my first festival with KIconcerts – I toured with my own choir with them to Cuba in 2018 and their reputation for organizing seamless concert tours including both independent and collaborative concerts, is well deserved.
I hope you will join me in allowing this music to enrich our lives in the place it was born and has thrived for generations.
Thomas Lloyd
Artistic Director & Conductor
Robert S. Cohen says
Tom,
Would you be interested in my anthem for inclusion “Safe Places of the Heart,” or would that be too [political for the festival. It is certainly about unity.
Sincerely,
Bob Cohen