This concert is the culmination of OSJ’s three-month community engagement project with the Oxford Spires Academy. Four refugee and migrant students from the Academy have worked with composer Toby Young and OSJ’s associate conductor, Cayenna Ponchione, to create orchestral ‘backing tracks’ to spoken word performances of their own poems. The project builds on the award-winning poetry programme at the school developed by author Kate Clanchy. Three additional poems from Clanchy’s edited volume of the students’ poems: England: Poems from a School (Picador), have been set by professional composers for voice and orchestra.
Orchestra of St John's Strings, condcutor Cayenna Ponchione
Including Barber Adagio, and Shostakovich Chamber Symphony