Holywell Street, Oxford OX1 3SD

Programme:
John Ireland: Two Songs - Tryst & During Music
Eric McElroy: The Fetch (Five Poems by Gregory Leadbetter) (premiere)
Ian Venables: Two Songs, Op. 28 - Flying Crooked; At Midnight
Eric McElroy: A Dead Man's Embers (Six Poems by Robert Graves)
April Fredrick, soprano
Eric McElroy, piano
Gregory Leadbetter, poet
Pre-concert talk at 7:15pm

This provocative song-recital probes themes of the uncanny in a programme merging the traditional with the contemporary. At its core is the premiere of a song-cycle by American pianist-composer Eric McElroy (Merton College, Oxford) based on poems by Gregory Leadbetter (Birmingham City University) that examines music’s ability to reawaken the mystical in the ordinary – to unleash what Leadbetter calls ‘a sense between the skin and something understood’. This cycle is paired with songs by John Ireland and Ian Venables, as well as McElroy’s cycle of poems by Robert Graves, A Dead Man’s Embers, which was hailed by Musical Opinion as “a masterpiece by a young composer of whom much can be expected.”

A pre-concert talk at 7.15pm considers the collaboration between poet and composer and the effect of song-setting on our understanding of poetry.

Supported by Merton College and Oxford University's TORCH Network.