Our first concert, in 2018, was on the theme of evening prayers, centred around a performance of the then very rarely performed La Vieille prière bouddhique (Prière quotidienne pour tout l'univers), by Lili Boulanger. This set the tone for future projects, in which we always endeavour to perform music by under-represented composers alongside new music. We often use a narrative approach to text and music, one which asks questions as much as it inspires audiences and singers alike.

Mourning into Dancing (2021) took on the theme of music of grief transfigured into joy, through North American music of wandering, struggle, and homecoming, including David Lang’s Again (After Ecclesiastes), arrangements of sacred harp songs, Caroline Shaw’s And the Swallow, alongside Libby Larsen, Rosephanye Powell, and Aaron Copland. 

The Evening Primrose (2022) mapped ecological loss and a yearning to protect the natural world onto human griefs loves and griefs, based around a complete performance of Herbert Howells’ Requiem. Taking depictions of nature, desire, and loss, the concert combined from Sixteenth Century settings of the Song of Songs, with Judith Bingham’s The Drowned Lovers, her companion piece to Stanford’s The Blue Bird. 

Byrdsong marked the 400th anniversary of the deaths of William Byrd and Thomas Weelkes, bringing together sacred music by Byrd with a wider selection of works on the theme of birdsong. The programme centred on Byrd’s Mass for Five Voices, alongside motets that reflect both his deep religious conviction and his response to political persecution. These were paired with pieces from the Renaissance to the present day that imitate or are inspired by birds, drawing a connection between devotional music and the natural world.

Pathway of Light was shaped around Northern Lights by Ēriks Ešenvalds, a powerful meditation on the aurora borealis and the mystery of the northern night. Scored for choir, solo tenor, and tuned glasses, the piece combines Latvian folk song with texts by 19th-century Arctic explorers Charles Francis Hall and Fridtjof Nansen. Surrounding this were Marian settings drawn from centuries of music written for the midnight mass, from Hildegard of Bingen’s Ave generosa to Tomás Luis de Victoria’s eight-part Ave Maria. The programme moved between Renaissance polyphony, modern choral writing, and traditional carols, tracing a narrative of winter stillness and mysticism. 

Other programmes have been more thematically based. Der Geist Spricht was a programme of German music of lamentation and revelation, from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries. This paired Brahms’ ‘Warum ist das Licht gegeben’, and Mauersberger’s moving response bombing of Dresden, alongside one JS Bach’s less-performed motets, and Heinrich Schütz' glorious Selig sind die Toten. 

We have collaborated with orchestras and instrumentalists. After our first collaboration on a performance of Bach’s St John Passion with London City Orchestra, we worked with a talented group of early-career baroque and folk instrumentalists as part of a Christmas concert, performing works by Charpentier, Theile, and Praetorius, exploring how the composers drew inspiration from the folk traditions of their day.

In Bloom (2025) explored themes of conflict, endurance, and rebirth. Holst’s Mass in G Minor and Britten’s Five Flower Songs reflect on the cycles of the natural world. Ginastera’s Lamentations of Jeremiah and Tsupryk’s Tyhoyi Nochi respond to war and exile—Tsupryk setting both Ukrainian poetry and an excerpt from a 2022 speech by President Zelensky. Rautavaara’s Lorca Suite sets four poems by Federico García Lorca. All profits for this concert went to Médecins Sans Frontières.