The Lost Birds
"VOCES8’s performance glowed...each member aware of his or her role, lines overlapping with sublime inevitability"
- Gramophone
Celebrating the 150th anniversary of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ birth and VOCES8’s two new record releases, The VOCES8 Foundation Choir and Orchestra conducted by Barnaby Smith brought to you a concert flight of firsts inspired by nature and our relationship with birds.
Trailer for The Lost Birds
“The virtuosity and fine detailing of Liebeck’s playing are pretty jawdropping... fierce and thrilling.”
- Gramophone
The world premiere performance of Grammy Award-winning composer Christopher Tin’s The Lost Birds, was paired with Classic FM’s Hall of Fame No.1, The Lark Ascending which presented a brand new adaptation of the work for soloist, choir and orchestra. The Lost Birds is sweeping and elegiac, the combined choir and orchestra voicing a tribute to the soaring flocks that once filled our skies and celebrate their feathered beauty and symbolism as messengers of hope, peace, and renewal. George Meredith’s now famous poem ‘The Lark Ascending’ was woven back into the orchestral score to gild soloist Jack Liebeck’s “beguiling silvery tone” and celebrated the release by Jack and VOCES8 of Paul Drayton’s vocal arrangement of the piece.
Alongside these treats were Mendelssohn’s stormy ‘The Hebrides’ Overture Op.26 (Fingal’s Cave), and the premieres of two new choral/orchestral arrangements by Grammy Award-winning composer Eric Whitacre, Sleep, and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw whose and the swallow included a violin solo in response to The Lark Ascending.
Please note: Any ticket links that appear in videos on this page are historic and not operational