World premiere of a multi-media collaboration between composer Sally Beamish and painter Jila Peacock inspired by an Anglo-Saxon poem newly translated by Charles Harrison Wallace. Music commissioned by SOTP.

Sally Beamish piano
Graeme McNaught piano
Elizabeth Layton violin
Robert Irvine cello
narrator to be announced

The Seafarer is the nineteenth century name for an anonymous lyric poem which was intended as an oral address or invocation. Originally inscribed in about 975 AD, it has been translated by over forty authors into five languages. It uses the timeless imagery of life as a voyage and death as a sea passage to an undiscovered country, to tell of an imperilled civilisation.

Sally Beamish is among the UK's very top contemporary composers and is currently enjoying considerable success with commissions from and performances of her work by the LPO, BBCSO, London Mozart Players, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, several Scandinavian orchestras as well as with her film and TV scores. Her work has been recorded by Fretwork, the Composers' Ensemble and by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra. She is based in Scotland and will perform the premiere with members of the Chamber Group of Scotland.

Sharing a fascination for The Seafarer is painter and printmaker Jila Peacock, whose powerful, eerie and distinctive monotypes give visual expression to the poem. They will be projected during the music. Peacock's series of The Seafarer monotypes were the centrepiece of a recent exhibition of her work entitled Deep Water at New Hall, Cambridge.

The Seafarer will be preceded by a performance of Ravel's piano trio.

Tickets £15.00
Sponsored by Boydell & Brewer Limited

> The series of Seafarer prints are availble in the prints section for your viewing pleasure.