'messages' with Three Choirs Festival and Philharmonia

messages is the first larger-scale choral work written by Nathan, for solo mezzo-soprano, choir, percussion, timpani, and string orchestra. Initially inspired by Gustav Holst’s The Cloud Messenager which features in the same concert of the work’s world premiere, messages looks at how we respond to life events that either shock or move us.

These five movements explore the ways in which messages have permeated our collective history, from one culture to another, one generation to another. Each movement is inspired or sets the words from either a civilisation or a person who wanted to share, to honour, or to warn. Nathan has excerpted, adapted, and created text which responds to the Mayan Account of the Spanish Conquest (1540-1546) in the Chilam Balam of Chumayel, Kao Khalia Yang’s moving letter to a refugee child going to ‘a better place’, a heartfelt poem called 'Ascension' by Amelie Simon (Worcestershire's 2023 Young Poet Laureate), Psalms 46:6 and 53 from Clementine Vulgate, and a public report from Sandia National Laboratories (1993) for long-term nuclear waste warning messages following disaster.

This work was commissioned by the Three Choirs Festival, with the generous support from the Colwinston Charitable Trust and the Three Choirs Festival Commissioning Circle.

More information about messages

For full information about this new work, please visit this dedicated webpage. (lInk embedded)

When can I hear this being performed live?

For more information about when you can hear this in concert, please visit this webpage (link embedded)