In this concert, British soprano, Jessica Summers, and Russian-Lithuanian pianist, Jelena Makarova, take you on a romantic rollercoaster from seventeenth century laments to twenty first century Namibian love songs.

The concert will be in our Grade II listed Chapel and will start at 7pm and run until 9pm with a 15 minute interval.

Jessica Summers has performed around the UK both in concerts and in opera. An alumna of the Britten-Pears Young Artists Programme (Contemporary Performance directed by the late Oliver Knussen) and New Vocal Repertory courses (directed by Jane Manning), Jessica has performed twentieth and twenty first century music in a wide range of venues and festivals including the Three Choirs Festival, Holywell Music Room, Oxford (Pierrot Lunaire), St John’s Smith Square, Brighton Festival, York Late Music Festival, King’s Lynn Festival, Dartington Hall, Ripon Cathedral, Science Museum (London) and the St Martin in the Fields New Music Series. She has sung in several tours for English Touring Opera, for Opera North (Education) and for the Royal Opera, Covent Garden.

Committed to singing new music, she has performed pieces such as A Mind of Winter (George Benjamin), Ring A Dumb Carillon (Birtwistle) & Beuk o’ Neucassel Sangs (Finnissy), Poems Almost of this World (Richard Causton) as well as giving the first performances of many new vocal pieces.

Jelena Makarova is an award winning Russian-Lithuanian pianist based in London. She studied at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre and at the Royal Academy of Music, where she participated in masterclasses with Pierre Laurent-Aimard and György Kurtág.

She is in high demand as a soloist, chamber musician, accompanist. Performances include concerts at Carnegie Hall, New York; Mozart’s Konzerthaus, Vienna; St. Martin-in-the-Fields; St. James’s Piccadilly; St. John’s Smith Square and St. George’s Hall, Bristol. Jelena has also collaborated with the New London Orchestra, National Youth Wind Orchestra of Great Britain, Baltic Art Form and the Royal Ballet School. She is a co-founding member of Living Songs, Chromatikon collective and Trio Sonorité, which was featured on Women’s Radio Station as part of the Future Classic Awards.

For more information about LIVING SONGS, go to www.livingsongs.co.uk and follow on Twitter @LivingSongs21