Opening Concert of Graham Johnson’s Songmakers’ Almanac Series

Ailish Tynan – Soprano
Anna Huntley  – Mezzo-Soprano
Benjamin Appl – Baritone
William Thomas – Bass
Graham Johnson – Piano

As part of this first concert, Graham Johnson has devised a programme for soprano, mezzo, baritone and bass, featuring songs by composers born in the month of January, such as Mozart, Schubert, Poulenc, Tippett and Ivor Novello.

In this first concert of the series, the almanac lives up to its name as a source of information pertaining to anniversaries and special days of the year (inspired by Robert Chambers famous Book of Days from 1863: "a Miscellany of Popular Antiquities in Connection with the Calendar, including Anecdote, Biography & History. Curiosities of Literature and Oddities of Human Life and Character"). These January red letter days (the birthdays of ten composers, five poets, and two great songs, and the deaths of two composers and nine poets) represent as random a selection of unlikely bedfellows as only chance can select. The secret of any anthology however is to make the progression of information - and in this case music -  pleasing enough to appear logical, even inevitable, and for the whole to be more than the sum of its many parts.