Nathan’s dramatic, 30-minute song-cycle, Grey and Green are all my Light, setting texts by Robert Jellicoe, ‘came home’ to Southwold on June 22nd with a performance in St. Edmund’s Church as part of the Southwold Arts Festival.
The songs set poetry and prose from Robert Jellicoe’s recent book Shorelines – Voices of Southwold Fishermen, which provides a vivid account of the culture of seafaring in and around Southwold, based mainly on Jellicoe’s own aural history archive which he started collecting from locals in the 1970s.
He was the inspired to write poetic prefaces to each chapter of the book, telling of voices of lost seafarers and their efforts to communicate with those left behind – extracts of these were set by Nathan Williamson in his romantic, virtuosic, and dramatic song-cycle.
Nathan accompanied baritone Robert Gildon in this performance, part of a programme of ‘Suffolk’s Songs’, featuring music with strong ties to Suffolk, including work by Vaughan Williams, Butterworth, Britten, Carwithen, and Martin Shaw.
Southwold’s stunning St. Edmund’s Church provided the perfect backdrop for this performance, bringing to a conclusion a long and hard-working season for both artists – and composer! A long summer holiday beckons…!
A further performance of ‘Suffolk Songs’ – the last in this current run of events, which has seen performances in a dozen or so concerts across the country – takes place in Bury St. Edmund’s on September 15th. Click here for more details.