Vox Holloway in association with St Luke’s Church, West Holloway, presents a charity premiere MUSIC ON THE MIND

“A simply fantastic project” Stephen Fry A new choral work by Harvey Brough & Justin Butcher

Songs of mania, madness and melancholy, including a new choral setting of Kay Redfield Jamison’s ground-breaking memoir, An Unquiet Mind

Vox Holloway The Holloway Players

Soloists Clara Sanabras mezzo-soprano & Nicholas Garrett baritone

with Mind and Soul Maudsley Hospital director Lea Cornthwaite

Conducted by Harvey Brough

All ticket proceeds to Islington Mind & Soundwell Music Therapy Trust

Sunday 29th November, 7.30pm St Luke’s Church, West Holloway

voxholloway.com Image: Simon Rackham. Design: Hannah Barton Vox Holloway in association with St Luke’s Church, West Holloway, presents Music on the Mind

A new choral work by Harvey Brough and Justin Butcher

PART I SATURNALIA PART II AN UNQUIET MIND

29th November 2015 St Luke’s Church Holloway

Clara Sanabras Mezzo-soprano (and ukulele) Nicholas Garrett Baritone

Paul Archibald Trumpet Hugh Webb Harp Michael Haslam Zoe Martlew Violoncello Gelbergs Solicitors are proud to support Elena Hull Contrabass Jeremy Cornes Percussion Vox Holloway’s 2015 charity concert and wish the choir every success Vox Holloway Choir Mind and Soul Choir Lea Cornthwaite Director

Conducted by Harvey Brough

Vox Holloway’s long-term sponsors Exan Coachworks and unpaid carers. Experienced therapists use music and sound Gelbergs Solicitors have joined with an anonymous donor to promote well-being, change and recovery. to cover the production costs of this concert. We are most www.soundwell.org. grateful for this generous support. All ticket revenues and other proceeds will go to our two nominated charities: Islington Mind is the leading independent mental health organisation in Islington and offers high quality services to Soundwell is the only specialist adult mental health music local residents seeking mental health advice and support. therapy charity in the UK. It operates in Wiltshire, Bath and The website gives details of the organisation and the services North East Somerset, and provides music therapy and music that Islington Mind provides. support groups for users of mental health services and for www.islingtonmind.org.uk

If you wish to donate please visit the Vox Holloway Just Giving page at www.justgiving.com/VoxHollowayMusicOnTheMind Programme design by Hannah Barton Programme Agonies & ecstasies ... In Kubla Khan, Coleridge’s opium-fuelled vision takes us on an PART I I - AN UNQUIET MIND enchanted journey to the fabulous realm of Xanadu, ending with Part II is a choral adaptation, in eleven sequences of blank verse the yearning grasp of his memory at the threads of the vanished narrative, of Kay Redfield Jamison’s ground-breaking memoir of Drawing together poems and texts of mania, madness and Saturnalia begins with Emily Dickinson’s poem, Much Madness is dream - “Could I revive within me/Her symphony and song ... manic-depressive illness, An Unquiet Mind. melancholy from many eras and cultures, Music On The Mind divinest Sense, which appears in three movements interspersed I would build that dome in air” - and then, he says, everyone who explores the agonies and ecstasies of the unquiet mind through throughout the piece. “Much madness is divinest sense, much sense heard and saw me would recognise that I am not insane but Kay is a distinguished American clinical psychologist, music. the starkest madness …” Sanity and madness are defined by the transfigured: the “mad” poet as prophet of the hidden realm, psychiatrist and writer, born in 1946, whose work has centred prevailing ethos, neuroses and predilections of contemporary seer of truths invisible to the “normal” human mind. on bipolar disorder, which she has lived with herself since early Against a zeitgeist of growing awareness and concern over culture. To see things differently, to descent, defect or, as adulthood, and for which her preferred term is manic-depressive mental health issues, Harvey and I were inspired – or galvanised Dickinson puts it, ‘demur’, is to risk being labelled mad. The 18th century view of mental illness was complex: on the illness. In an interview, she has said she is an “exuberant” – personally by the tragic loss of four friends between us, who one hand, insanity was viewed as an offence against Reason, a person, yet she longs for peace and tranquility; but in the end, all committed suicide within a two-year period. All bright, This poem is followed by the ancient anonymous lyric, dangerous blight which had to be contained, cured, chastised, she has opted for “tumultuousness coupled to iron discipline” dynamic, creative people cherished by friends and families, Tom o’ Bedlam, about a famished madman from the Bedlam purged. On the other hand, it was believed (or acknowledged) over leading a “stunningly boring life.” people who gave generously to others and the world. And asylum wandering the streets begging for food and clothing. widely that the insane – literally “unhinged” from the “normal” yet each, in separate ways, was overwhelmed by a seemingly Fortunately, not a scenario one could ever imagine on the shackles of perception – were vouchsafed visionary experiences, An Unquiet Mind has been hailed recently as the unsurpassed incurable despair. This felt so wrong, so appallingly sad, and we streets of Britain today ... to be revered and studied to the benefit of all. modern literary text on bipolar disorder: “The writing is clear and were moved to try and create a project celebrating the voices and beautiful, the descriptions accurate, the interior world she evokes is stories of many great mental health sufferers whose lives and This early 17th century folk song tells of a young man who Coleridge suffered crippling bouts of anxiety and depression furiously alive. In the 16 years since it was first published, no greater work have enriched and changed our society. comes into his majority aged twenty-one, proceeds immediately throughout his life, and a lifelong addiction to opium book about manic depression – or bipolar disorder – has appeared.” to a whore-house, and falls deeply in love with a prostitute. In a (originally prescribed for rheumatic fever), which alienated (Alexander Linklater, The Observer, 14/08/11) With cuts to essential mental health services, the work of charities year-long spree she takes him for everything he’s got. Obsessed him from his family. He committed himself in 1817 to the such as Mind and Soundwell Music Therapy is more vital than and besotted, he is locked up as a madman, eventually released care of a well-known physician, James Gillman, in Highgate, In her memoir Kay concludes: “I long ago abandoned the notion of a ever. Over and above the funds we hope to raise, this piece is from Bedlam to wander the streets. London, where he remained until the end of his life in 1834. life without storms, or a world without dry and killing seasons. Life is too intended to be a cultural celebration – an exploration of some of The Gillman family built an extension on to their house to complicated, too constantly changing, to be anything but what it is. And the greatest poets and visionaries down the ages touched by or His call to us rings true today: “Come, dame or maid, be not afraid; accommodate Coleridge. “Coleridge sat on the brow of Highgate I am, by nature, too mercurial to be anything but deeply wary of the grave with madness and melancholy. Maybe if we can start to recognise Poor Tom will injure nothing”. Tormented and haunted as he is, Hill, in those years, looking down on London and its smoke-tumult, unnaturalness involved in any attempt to exert too much control over and celebrate the incredible contributions made in our history by Tom is also a visionary (“I know more than Apollo”). We who like a sage escaped from the inanity of life’s battle ... The practical essentially uncontrollable forces. There will always be propelling, disturbing countless inspired, brilliant women and men afflicted by anxiety, think ourselves “normal”, “healthy”, “sane” etc find characters intellects of the world did not much heed him, or carelessly reckoned elements, and they will be there until, as Lowell put it, the watch is taken depression, psychosis or bipolar disorder, there might be less like Tom troublesome, disturbing, ugly. We wish they’d go him a metaphysical dreamer: but to the rising spirits of the young from the wrist. It is, at the end of the day, the individual moments of stigma attached to these conditions. More widely supported and away and stop disturbing our peaceful, orderly existence. But, generation he had this dusky sublime character; and sat there as a kind restlessness, of bleakness, of strong persuasions and maddened enthusiasms, understood, perhaps fewer mental health sufferers would end up this song suggests, if we stretch out our hand to the reviled of Magus, girt in mystery and enigma; his Dodona oak-grove (Mr. that inform one’s life, change the nature and direction of one’s work, and taking their own lives. lunatic beggar, we will find our own illumination. Gilman’s house at Highgate) whispering strange things, uncertain give final meaning and color to one’s loves and friendships.” whether oracles or jargon.” (Thomas Carlyle) Emma Thompson , Vox Holloway patron, says: “The phrase In Fernando Pessoa’s Note, we discover a striking exploration All great literature carries you from the particular to the universal ‘mental health’ is such a tricky one to hear or to use without feeling of the idea of fractured beauty. Pessoa created many aliases or In my own poem That News, I try to express empathy in the and although I’ve never experienced anything like what she somehow downcast. Why? We’re perfectly happy to bang on about pseudonyms for himself in life (or heteronyms, as he called face of the unspeakable awfulness of a child’s suicide. The describes – wild, intense bouts of mania, florid psychosis, suicidal our sore backs or our stressed out neck and shoulder areas. We all have them), acting out the inner fragmentation he describes here. fact of a friend’s child taking her own life (after several years’ depression – her writing enables me to enter her story imaginatively physical health and we all have mental health. Sometimes they’re in The poet alludes to an experience of shattering disintegration, struggle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) is so unbearably and to get a sense of the agonies and ecstasies of the “unquiet good nick and sometimes they’re not. It’s fantastically refreshing to have precipitated by what, we don’t know - a failed love affair? sad, so appalling, so utterly against the grain of every instinct mind”. And Harvey’s witty, impassioned and soulful musical visionaries like Harvey Brough and Justin Butcher commit their art to A bereavement? Disgrace or scandal? - as a result of which he that we find it almost impossible to speak of it directly – it is settings of these words conjure that imaginative empathy into a an examination of one of our most precious possessions, feels not only irretrievably broken, lost, split into countless “unspeakable”. To name it somehow would wound the air, so it really amazing experience for the choir - with 100 singers focusing our minds.” shards, but also feels “more sensations than when I felt like becomes “that news”. And yet we must speak of it. Such sadness their voices, will, imagination and energies into telling with absolute myself”. And, “absurdly”, he says, each shard is conscious. is all around us. commitment and sincerity the story of one woman’s journey PART I - SATURNALIA And out of this chaos, this mess, this disarray of a ruined life, through madness. Part I presents new choral settings of seven poems, entitled one shard, one part of him, he’s not sure which part - maybe The refrain, “All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well”, Saturnalia, after the ancient Roman winter festival of wild dancing his work, maybe his “primary soul” - shines so brightly that the and the reference to the vision of the hazelnut are from the We hope we can share this experience and this journey with you. and revelry in honour of Saturn, patron god of melancholy. The gods mistake it for one of the stars. “Revelations of Divine Love” of the mediaeval mystic Julian of Stephen Fry comments: “I don’t know of anyone who is much more than Greeks and Romans revered the domain of Saturn – or Chronos Norwich (1342-1416). three steps away from the most serious kind of mental health affliction. – as an inescapable, even necessary, element of life. Depression, Sylvia Plath’s Mad Girl’s Love Song, written in 1951 while she We all know someone who knows someone who killed themselves. It’s that sadness and melancholy were viewed as legitimate colours or was a student at Smith College, imagines a girl who spends her Saturnalia ends with I Am by John Clare. This desolate poem harsh and unescapable a fact. Throughout history our race has characterised shades in the spectrum of life. If someone was depressed in life waiting for a man she gave herself to, against her beliefs, speaks powerfully and poignantly from a place of revilement madness in varied ways. In our era we have a different language to express Roman culture, they were described as being “with Saturn” - who was never to return. “I think I made you up inside my head and isolation. A sufferer feeling utterly abandoned by everyone, our thoughts about minds gone wrong, and a convincing one of brain/ paying homage to, or revering, one of the important gods. They ... the stars go waltzing out in blue and red, And arbitrary blackness he longs not to rejoin the world which has rejected him, but to hormone/neural wiring it is too. But, in my view, it is art, poetry and music celebrated the darkest season of the year, the winter solstice, gallops in ... I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.” In her make or find a new world, “where man hath never trod”, where he that always find the shortest distance to the truth of human feeling and with the Saturnalia – a crazy orgy of torch-lit dancing, music and diary, written at around this period she declares, “To annihilate can live “with my Creator, God,/And sleep as I in childhood sweetly experience. A musical drama that blends the voices of some of the finest revelry, rampaging through the streets of Rome for several weeks the world by annihilation of one’s self ... The simple way out of all slept/Untroubling and untroubled where I lie/The grass below - above poets in our language with the work of Kay Redfield Jamison, my own in December banishing, or perhaps propitiating, the darkness of the little brick dead ends we scratch our nails against … I want to kill the vaulted sky.” To my mind, the poem is all the more powerful personal hero in the arena of bipolar disorder — well that seems to me like a winter. We might stop short of that in Holloway ... myself, to escape from responsibility, to crawl back abjectly into and poignant because it speaks directly to us across a gap of simply fantastic project. Thank you all for doing this.” the womb.” nearly 200 years. JUSTIN BUTCHER Music on the Mind Nonsense? Impossible? I’m not so sure! I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. Libretto – arranged, compiled and written by Justin Butcher I have more sensations than when I felt like myself. (I think I made you up inside my head.)” I’m a scattering of shards on a doormat that needs “Those who are in a frenzy utter many wonderful things … no one, however diligent and learned in all the arts, shaking. MuCH MAdNESS IS dIVINEST SENSE II has ever excelled in poetry unless to all these other qualities has been added a fiery quickening of the soul.” (Marsilio Ficino, 1433-99) My fall made a noise like a shattering vase. KuBLA KHAN All the gods there are lean over the stair rail by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) PART I SATURNALIA And look at the shards their maid changed me into. Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment. MuCH MAdNESS IS dIVINEST SENSE When I short have shorn my sow’s face They don’t get mad at her. by Emily Dickinson (1830–86) And swigged my horny barrel, They’re forgiving. In Xanadu did Kubla Khan In an oaken inn I pound my skin What was I but an empty vase? A stately pleasure-dome decree: Much Madness is divinest Sense - As a suit of gilt apparel; Where Alph, the sacred river, ran To a discerning Eye - The moon’s my constant mistress, They look at the absurdly conscious shards – Through caverns measureless to man Much Sense - the starkest Madness - And the lowly owl my marrow; Conscious of themselves, not of the gods. Down to a sunless sea. ’Tis the Majority The flaming drake and the night crow make In this, as all, prevail - Me music to my sorrow. They look and smile. So twice five miles of fertile ground Assent - and you are sane - They smile forgivingly at the unwitting maid. With walls and towers were girdled round; Demur - you’re straightway dangerous - While I do sing, Any food, any feeding etc. And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, And handled with a Chain - The great staircase stretches out, carpeted with stars. Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; I know more than Apollo, A shard gleams, shiny side up, among the heavenly And here were forests ancient as the hills, ToM o’ BEdLAM For oft, when he lies sleeping, bodies. Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. Anon., early 17th cent. I see the stars at bloody wars My work? My primary soul? My life? In the wounded welkin weeping; A shard. But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted “The greatest anonymous lyric in the English language” The moon embrace her shepherd, And the gods stare at it, intrigued, not knowing Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! (Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of Humanities, Yale) And the Queen of Love her warrior, why it’s there. A savage place! as holy and enchanted While the first doth horn the star of morn, As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted From the hag and hungry goblin And the next the heavenly Farrier. MAd GIRL’S LoVE SoNG By woman wailing for her demon-lover! That into rags would rend ye, by Sylvia Plath (1932–63) And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil The spirit that stands by the naked man While I do sing, Any food, any feeding etc. seething, In the Book of Moons defend ye, “I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, That of your five sound senses With a host of furious fancies I lift my lids and all is born again. A mighty fountain momently was forced: You never be forsaken, Whereof I am commander, (I think I made you up inside my head.) Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst Nor wander from your selves with Tom With a burning spear and a horse of air, Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Abroad to beg your bacon, To the wilderness I wander. The stars go waltzing out in blue and red, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail: By a knight of ghosts and shadows And arbitrary blackness gallops in: And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever While I do sing, Any food, any feeding, I summoned am to tourney It flung up momently the sacred river. Feeding, drink, or clothing; Ten leagues beyond the wide world’s end: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. Come dame or maid, be not afraid, Methinks it is no journey. I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Poor Tom will injure nothing. And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane. Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, While I do sing, Any food, any feeding, etc. (I think I made you up inside my head.) Then reached the caverns measureless to man, Of thirty bare years have I And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean; Twice twenty been enragèd, NoTE God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade: And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far And of forty been three times fifteen by Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) Exit seraphim and Satan’s men: Ancestral voices prophesying war! In durance soundly cagèd I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. On the lordly lofts of Bedlam, My soul shattered like an empty vase. The shadow of the dome of pleasure With stubble soft and dainty, It fell irretrievably down the stairs. I fancied you’d return the way you said, Floated midway on the waves; Brave bracelets strong, sweet whips ding-dong, If fell from the hands of the careless maid. But I grow old and I forget your name. Where was heard the mingled measure With wholesome hunger plenty, It fell, breaking into more pieces than there was (I think I made you up inside my head.) From the fountain and the caves. china in the vase. I should have loved a thunderbird instead; It was a miracle of rare device, While I do sing, Any food, any feeding etc. At least when spring comes they roar back again. A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! PART II AN UNQUIET MIND A damsel with a dulcimer And all shall be well. text by Justin Butcher from An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison (b.1946) In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid Weep, gasp, despair, rage, And on her dulcimer she played, Let storm-floods rake and rip through you. PRELudE: MANIA-LITE doWN THE RABBIT-HoLE of Mount Abora. Give in, give up, be weak, be strong, Could I revive within me Fall headlong through the gash At first, everything seemed so easy! Then the bottom began to fall out of my life. Her symphony and song, torn open in the ground of life. I raced about like a crazed weasel, The bottom began to fall out of my mind. To such a deep delight ’twould win me, Full of plans, enthusiasms, Clear-as-crystal thoughts turn into mud. That with music loud and long, All manner of thing shall be well. immersed in sports, staying up all night, I count on my mind as a matter of course! I would build that dome in air, night after night, out with friends, But I read the same page over and over That sunny dome! those caves of ice! Fall headlong – like the hazelnut reading, reading everything – and nothing – nothing – nothing goes in. And all who heard should see them there, Storm-wrenched from its tree, filling manuscripts with poems, I can’t remember what I have just read – And all should cry, Beware! Beware! Even as a palm spread wide, fragments of plays, and glittering prose, every poem, every book, His flashing eyes, his floating hair! To catch it as it fell. making grand plans for my future, seems to be meaningless. Weave a circle round him thrice, wildly unrealistic plans, And close your eyes with holy dread MuCH MAdNESS IS dIVINEST SENSE III the world was filled with pleasure and promise! Staring out of the window in class For he on honey-dew hath fed, (I haven’t a clue what the lecturer’s saying), And drunk the milk of Paradise. I AM I feel great! Not great, really great!!! Terrifying, petrified … by John Clare (1793-1864) My mind is my best friend - THAT NEWS Written in late 1844 or 1845, in Northampton General Lunatic Asylum My mind is fabulously focused, I count on my mind as a matter of course! by Justin Butcher (b. 1969) leaping chasms of intuition I am - yet what I am none cares or knows; that hitherto had eluded me … Now my mind has turned on me, That news bent me, My friends forsake me like a memory lost: mocking my enthusiasms, a red-hot hammer on the heart, I am the self-consumer of my woes - Everything makes perfect sense cackling at my foolish plans, dissolving all my walls to wax, They rise and vanish in oblivious host, in a marvellous kind of cosmic order - twanging apart like a broken spring … and often, in that first week, Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes I’m fizzing with the laws of the natural world! my mind finds nothing interesting, I couldn’t trust myself to speak And yet I am, and live - like vapours tossed Badgering, buttonholing friends nothing interesting, nothing worthwhile … of simplest things from day to day, to tell them all how beautiful, my mind finds nothing worthwhile, (I, who did not know her Into the nothingness of scorn and noise, how beautiful it all is! incapable of concentration, and only feel an echo) Into the living sea of waking dreams, incapable of thought. or found myself, on waking Where there is neither sense of life or joys, Don’t you see it too? YOU MUST! to a world where all was well, But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems; Surely you like me must be transfixed, transported, I, we, all of us as daylight cracked the crust of sleep Even the dearest that I loved the best transfigured are going to die, so why, what like quicksand, remembering, Are strange - nay, rather, stranger than the rest. by the webbings and the weft and the weave and difference and tears welled afresh. symmetry of the cosmos! does it make? I long for scenes where man hath never trod Life’s run is short and meaningless – This is the passage you must walk, A place where woman never smiled or wept You’re talking too fast, slow down, Kay. Why live like this? I suppose, until each waking There to abide with my Creator, God, You’re wearing me out, slow down. Why live at all? is no longer desolation, And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept, For God’s sake, slow down. in the wounded land of your new world, Untroubling and untroubled where I lie You’re going too fast, slow down. Leaden feet trudge like a zombie to school; but simply how things are, The grass below - above the vaulted sky. For God’s sake, slow down. to choose what to wear is an insuperable effort; and the gasp of grief I wear the same stinking clothes day after day. no longer disembowels you, INTERVAL I did slow down. Talking to anyone fills me with dread; for it is the pulse and beat In fact, in fact … I avoid my friends whenever I can. of the healing broken heart. In fact, I came to a grinding halt. I sit in the library, with dead heart and a brain as cold as clay. This will come, although you cannot see or feel it yet, This had been a mere foretaste, And not because you want or wish it so; a smidgeon-tincture peppering, because it must. Exhaustipating quick-burn fuse, And yes, you will be whole, whole in loss, Exhilarausting prelude of the Truly Manic Real Deal, Woven through you like a strand of darkest wool. tiresome to my friends, but not Disturbingly Over-The-Top. dEATHLY SLEEP Two seats at the concert THE CHANCELLoR’S GARdEN PARTY CRASH ANd BuRN is never enough, give me a dozen! Grey, bleak, obsession with death - death, decay Don’t just enroll in five classes, The Chancellor’s garden party! Perhaps I am a A neuro-chemical pile-up on the highways of and dissolution. take another six or seven! little high, my brain! Everything is born to die; why not die now and Enraptured one day by the sparkle of the brook But scintillating, brilliant, irrepressible and charming! The more I try to slow my thinking down, the more save the pain? that flows through the college gardens, I talk to scads of people! Zipping from hors d’oeuvre I can’t - I drag exhausted mind and body round the local an epiphany takes hold and shows to hors d’oeuvre, from canapé to canapé, photo-copying poems in a frenzy of enthusiasm, cemetery – My fizzing brain a scene from Tennyson’s Idylls of from champagne to more champagne! articles from journals on religion and psychosis, how long, I wonder, did he live before his final moment? the King – circulating copies to the staff and all the students - and what about him? And him? And her? The Lady of the Onion, or Shallott, or some such thing – I button-hole the Chancellor and bend his ear for all the time more agitated, irritable, feverish, I’m convinced that my brain and body are rotting. And off I run, compelled to buy a copy of the text, an age – craving ever more intense excitement day and And what was the point? The purpose? along with twenty others that catch my eye – He of course has no idea who the hell I am, night ... What conceivable difference did it make? But he listens with great courtesy, or perhaps he The Once and Future King - TH White just fancies me - My marriage falls apart; I find myself in harsh I sit upon the graves writing dreary poems. (It all made absolute sense!), Either way, I’m sure he finds me deeply captivating. rebellion I hide my true state from my friends, the Mort d’Arthur, of course, against the things that I love most in him - from my family, (And all connected, obviously) I’m having such a fabulous time! my husband’s kindness, nobody knows and no one says. The Golden Bough, The Celtic Realm, and Abelard and Such a bubblesome, seductrous time! stability, warmth, love - I can’t bear it! Yes, yes, I’m fine, I lie, Eloise … really fine, but thanks for asking. Then I talk of elephants with the chair of my KICK IT DOWN! KICK IT DOWN! I know something’s dreadfully wrong, The legend of King Arthur was the one essential key department KICK IT ALL TO PIECES! KICK IT DOWN! but we keep our problems to ourselves. To unlock the myriad secrets of creation! (he killed a rented elephant once Isn’t that how we’re taught to be? by injecting it with LSD): I buy a new apartment - ultra-modern, chic Dignified and self-sufficient, Books by Jung and Robert Graves, Tristan and I’m fascinated by your work on elephants and hyraxes! (I hate modern architecture, never mind, it suits my Isolde, In fact, I’m going to track down lots of articles, mood); To be sure (wrote Hugo Wolf, a soul-mate of an (Human nature laid bare in all its fractured, fragile are there hundreds? Well, of course! I buy modern furniture - ultra-modern, chic earlier age), splendour), I’m also volunteering for some work at LA Zoo, (I hate modern furniture) - I appear at times merry, in good heart and talk, too, Anthologies of creation myths, and Scottish fairy Animal behaviour studies, yes, that’s right, I know! everything angular, clinical, cool, before my peers; it looks as though if I felt, too, tales … And ethology, yes, in fact I’m going to teach a course on unrestrained buying sprees worse-than-ever-before God knows how well within my skin, Passion, violence, aspiration, grace, love and betrayal! that – - when I’m high I can’t worry about money if I try - Yet the soul maintains its deathly sleep Pharmacology and behaviourism, yes, I’m teaching so I don’t. The money will come from somewhere. And the heart bleeds from a thousand wounds. Propelled by the flame of Absolute Truth, my mind those as well … God will provide. wove ever weirder webs: Quite terrible wounds to mind and heart: this week’s obsession, essential purchases, all these I’m having such a fabulous time, Credit cards and overdrafts are God’s gift to mania: the shock of total bafflement, books, the Holy Grail; such a bubblesome, seductrous time! Spend! Spend! the market exhorts us - thoughts wild, out of control, next week, a new illumination, new essential Spend! Spend! Pay whenever! the feelings of sickness unto death … spending sprees … Other people saw me differently: a young Obediently I go ballistic. I’m quite amazed that I survived, woman dressed Apocalyptic shopping sprees! all on my own, all by myself. The Bank, of course, had no appreciation of in remarkably provocative style, The Truth, with excessive make-up garishly applied, Sounds become distilled, intensely vivid in my ears. SEduCEd BY MANIA (the Universal Truth of my oracular insights), talking frenetically at anyone and everyone … Music breaks my heart: single notes from an oboe and so, with unerring timing, all my bills and or a cello … quite exquisite. I am seduced by mania! credit card Kay looks manic … I hear each note alone, then I hear all together, Fitful intoxicating moods demands for payment, notices of overdraft and with a wounding clarity - burst my brain with cataracts of glittering ideas! statements of account - was what they were thinking. I feel as though I’m floating in the orchestra’s midst! My hemlines go up and my necklines go down! would arrive to sound the reveillé – I love my youth, my body, my skin, You are broke, Kay. Totally broke. I, on the other hand, thought I was splendid! But soon, the music’s piercing sadness becomes too My sensualitudity! - just as weeks of exaltation tipped and plunged keen to bear, Everything in excess! into depression. overwhelmed by its intensity, impatient with the pace, Instead of one Beethoven symphony, I switch to rock ‘n’ roll, pull out all my Rolling what the hell? Buy nine, buy ten! Eleven! Stones albums, play them at full volume, scattered wild across HoRRoR SHoW TREATMENT EPILoGuE: THE SEA-WALL the floor. One evening, I stood in the middle of my Endless, terrifying days There is a season for everything: a time for building, I buy expensive watches, three within three living-room, Of endless terrifying drugs: “And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane.” hours’ space, and looked out at a blood-red sunset spreading Thorazine, lithium, My mind still, now and again, becomes a carnival precious stones, nothing but champagne tastes for me! across the ocean. Valium, barbiturates ... of lights, Then a dozen wardrobes full of siren-like I felt a sense of light behind my eyes … Finally take effect. laughter, exuberance and ease fill me, seductive outfits, I saw a huge black centrifuge inside my own head ... I feel my mind being reined in, spill out from me into the world. several hundred bucks on books I saw a tall figure in a floor-length evening gown Slowed down, put on hold. And then, from the top car of the Ferris wheel, which somehow or other catch my eye … approach the centrifuge with a long glass tube – A very long time until I recognise my mind again. my hopes a glass tube full of blood, as tall as a vase – An even longer time until I trust it. as swiftly as they came, will plummet down, Chaos in my rooms matches chaos in my mind. and as the figure turned around, I saw, to my horror, down into black, tired heaps of despair. I can’t process what I’m hearing, she was me, and there was blood all over her dress, Lithium, joint saviour of my body and soul, baffled, spooked, dislocated … I mean my dress, rescues me, clears out the wool But … time will pass. and blood on her cape and her long white gloves ... and webbing from my crazy thoughts, And I will be myself again. KICK IT DOWN! KICK IT DOWN! slows me down, KICK IT ALL TO PIECES! KICK IT DOWN! ... and I watched as she placed the tube of blood keeps me out Having heard so often that tolling bell Obediently I go ballistic! inside the centrifuge of institutions tolling softly, “Thou must die,” KICK IT DOWN! KICK IT DOWN! inside my head, and closed the lid and pushed the and alive. I turn more sharply to my life. KICK IT ALL TO PIECES! KICK IT DOWN! button down ... Therapy - my sanctuary We build sea walls to help us live, LoST Everything is real, outside me, not inside my head ... and my battleground, to keep at bay the griefs of life, where I have been the overwhelming tides of fear Darkness begins to weave its way into my mind. I’m paralysed with terror. The spinning of the psychotic and neurotic that rage within and around our minds. I can’t see the path … the path of my own thoughts. centrifuge, and elated and confused, Stone by stone we build our walls – Sentences fly around my head, then fragment the clanking of the glass against the metal grows louder, beyond all hope despairing ... of what? Of Love? Of Faith? Of work? into phrases, louder and louder, higher, faster, Therapy, ineffably, heals. then words in oddly-jointed pairings … the centre cannot hold … Build high enough and strong enough finally, just sounds … My skull explodes into a thousand pieces, MISSING SATuRN to make your harbour safe, my friend – inchoate, visceral, arbitrary sounds … blood and splinters everywhere – a sanctuary from crippling pain, racing round and round like tigers in my mind, blood spattered on the window panes, In that glorious illusion of high summer days, a haven from ruinous chaos – like tigers in a children’s book which melted across the walls and paintings, I found myself gliding and careening there is no life without storms, my friend - away to butter … blood warm and sticky soaking down into through cloud banks and ethers but do not build too high, my friend; meaningless, amorphous melted pools of the carpets... and past the glittering stars, let your sea-wall be low enough butter sounds … I looked out to the ocean: the blood mingles with across the fields of ice crystals, and leak enough to let the swell the sunset – all the way to Saturn. and the ebb and flow of fresh tides in. Nothing is familiar. Everything is too fast. I can’t tell which is which – I want to slow down, but I can’t slow down. which is blood and which is light shimmering on Heart-stopping, shattering shifting of light! Of my sea-wall, I know at last Nothing helps, not running round a parking lot for the sea? Inconstant but ravishing colours sifting out! the mortar and the rock is love. hours and hours, “Fly me to the moons!”, the moons of the Catherine- Love as sustainer, renewer, protector. Or swimming miles and miles and miles in the I scream and scream at the top of my lungs! wheel planet ... After each death in my mind or my heart, swimming pool. I can’t get away from the sight of the blood, love has returned to restore me to life again. My energy remains unchanged by anything I do. from the sound of the shattered centrifuge And tell me, if you’d lived such raptures, my friend, Sex becomes too vivid, too intense, too extreme. still clanking and whirling in my head. Would you not remember and mourn them ever after? By love I bear life’s sadness, and I scream and scream again and again! The sunrise on Saturn’s rim firing his haloes by love life’s beauty manifests, My delusions show me all the green plants in the I can’t get away from the sight of the blood, And leaping in flaming beams across the but patient, passionate love world ink-black sky? Has been my lantern and my cloak. dying painful deaths, leaf by leaf, stem by stem Slowly … the hallucination ... ebbs and recedes. It pierces me with such sadness, I have lost who I am, Wise, enduring, costly love with cacophonous screams and I am powerless to I telephone a colleague ... to come and rescue me. where I have been. Still shelters me and lights my way. save them. I pour myself a large Scotch … and sit and wait, trembling. And I miss Saturn. Mourn him. I miss him very much. END Vox Holloway HARVEY BRouGH is one of the UK’s most Opera National de Paris, Scottish Opera, Opera North, Opera accomplished and diverse . Harvey de Nantes, English Touring Opera and Teatro de la Zarzuela, (the voice of Holloway) and the Wallbangers had great success in the Madrid. For Théâtre du Châtelet: Count Carl Magnus- Malcolm 1980s throughout Europe. Harvey worked A Little Night Music; Anthony, Sweeney Todd; Max, The Sound Of with on the music for the films Music; Jigger, Carousel; Boatman, Sunday In The Park With George; Founded in 2009 by Justin Butcher, Vox Holloway is Thecla; Tavener’s Ex Maria Virgine; Rachmaninov’s Vespers; Merchant of Venice and Eyes Wide Shut, and Baker, Into the Woods. For Opera Holland Park: Escamillo, a community choir open to all: there are no auditions Ariel Ramirez’s Misa Criolla and Vivaldi’s Gloria. For more television work includes the BBC2 series In a Carmen; Don Giovanni, Title Role; Alfonso, Cosi Fan Tutte; and members are not required to have previous singing information including how to join, please visit Land of Plenty. Harvey’s Requiem in Blue (1999) has been performed Sonora Fanciulla del West; Scarpia Tosca. experience, belong to any faith, or live in a particular voxholloway.com more than 40 times throughout Europe. Other compositions postcode. Vox Holloway performs three or more times per include Valete in Pace (2004), Thecla (2008), A Fairy Dream PAuL ARCHIBALd has been a principal year, singing an eclectic range of classical, ecclesiastical, Vox Holloway’s next concert will be the CD launch of Clara (2009), and Beached, an opera commissioned by Opera North. player in the Orchestra of the Royal Opera folk, pop, and world music. Previous concerts have Sanabras’ A Hum About Mine Ears. On 6th March, 2016, with Harvey is the Turner Sims Professor of Music at the University House, Covent Garden, London Sinfonietta, included Handel’s Messiah and Foundling Hospital Anthem; the Britten Sinfonia and Chorus of Dissent, conducted by of Southampton, running a community choir there. And he BBC National Orchestra Wales and is Harvey Brough’s Requiem in Blue, A Particulare Care, and Harvey Brough, in The Barbican concert hall, London. is directing a new Youth Choir in Stoke Newington - Young currently principal trumpet and Chairman Dissenters. of the London Mozart Players and principal trumpet of the Britten Sinfonia and Orchestra JuSTIN BuTCHER is a writer, director, actor of St John’s. As a chamber he was a member of the SoPRANoS Alicia Montplaisir Perpetual Emovon Jo Tunnard and musician. Plays include Scaramouche Philip Jones Brass Ensemble and is artistic director of English Liz Alsford Eryl O’Day Susan Fox Jade Turner Jones; the satires The Madness of George Dubya, Brass and English Brass Academy. He is also a member of Marian Barber Yemi Oloyede Helen Haigh Tricia Zipfel A Weapons Inspector Calls, and Guantanamo the innovative chamber ensemble, Fibonacci Sequence. His Polly Barker Natalie O’Tham Katherine Heffernan Baywatch; Go to Gaza, Drink the Sea; and five performing career spans many genres: classical, commercial, Helen Barnett Suzy Pearson Janet Henfrey plays for BBC Radio 4. His latest plays are film, pop, folk, contemporary and he is currently musical Sarah Bennison Stevie Porter Mandy Hosking TENoRS Childhood in Berlin, about pre-war Berlin, and director of Regent Brass, on of the UK’s finest brass bands. He is Helen Britten Annette Riel Jane Keeley Jenny Hargreaves The Last Great Quest, commissioned for the centenary of Scott’s a Fellow of the Lynne Burrows Pippa Stubbs Sarah Kent Rick Leigh Antarctic Expedition. His biography of Jimmy Mizen, Jimmy – A Rosa Cagnoni Farah Syed Linda Lewis David Moreno Legacy of Peace, was published in 2013. Also in 2013, he produced HuGH WEBB has worked extensively in Bruna Cattini Ilaria Tarasconi Jan Logan Mark Reihill and curated the Bethlehem Unwrapped festival at St James’s Church, the contemporary music field and Javier Imogen Cauthery Avis Venning Amy MacGibbon Hugh Richardson Piccadilly, a contemporary celebration of the life and culture of Alvarez, Robert Keeley, Paul Archbold and Mary Cruickshank Tammy Walker Ruth Melhuish Mariana Rodrigues Bethlehem. He studied organ with Colin Myles at University Ian Dearden have all written solo works for Sheena Cruse Inga Wolf Isobel Mitchell Adam Skalski College School and singing with Michael Pearce at Oxford and him, with funding from The Arts Council of Ulrike Dewhurst Miranda Yates Polly Noble Philip Woods Teresia van Sertima at Drama Studio London, where he is now a . Classical CD recordings include Oenone Dudley Karen Patrick Ben Woolford tutor and director. He is founder-director of Vox Holloway and Bax’s Concerto for Flute, Oboe and Harp with Marianne Falk Maddy Paxman has been organist and choirmaster of St Luke’s Church since 1992. the Academy of St. Martin’s Chamber Ensemble (Chandos), Barbara Grender-Jones ALToS Shane Rowles a collection of Bach Flute Sonatas (Guild), Villalobos’ Quartet Kathy Grimes Ros Brown Jenny Setterington BASSES CLARA SANABRAS was born in France, (Clarinet Classics), Bax’s Fantasy Sonata (Koch International) Sue Hallam Hilary Buck Rosie Sheldon Jonathan Adams raised in Barcelona, and lives in London. She and the complete Spohr Violin and Harp Sonatas (Naxos). His Maureen Hanscomb Freddie Byron Anna Skalski Tim Bushe has appeared at many international festivals most recent recordings are a CD of French Renaissance songs Lona Jones Marion Chadwick Elizabeth Skalski Jim Joseph and venues, from Glastonbury to Sydney with the medieval group, Joglaresa and a recording of solo Elizabeth King Fay Clark Ruth Skinner Tim MacFarlane Opera House, and has collaborated with James and chamber music by Nino Rota for Zitto Records. From 2001 Emma Leigh Lynda Collingwood Lauren Souter Martin McEnery Horner, Jarvis Cocker, The Count & Sinden, to 2012, Hugh Webb was principal harp of the Philharmonia Sheila Lowery Marion Cullen Nicolette Spera James Murray Natacha Atlas, Luke Concannon (Nizlopi), The Orchestra and now freelances as guest principal of the major Elle Mcall Sandra Debo Elaine Spicer Archie Onslow Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain, and 21st century orchestra. She London orchestras and is active in the film and television music Sue McIntosh Ellie Doney Jacqui Steel Matthew Evan Smith has acted at the National Theatre and The Globe and has appeared worlds. Hugh has composed a show for children based on Storm Moncur Francesca Elston Maggie Tomlin alongside Al Pacino in the film, The Merchant of Venice, on radio Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen. with Bill Nighy, and in concert under the guidance of Karlheinz Stockhausen, the forefather of electronica. She is featured in MICHAEL HASLAM is a pianist, organist, several Hollywood soundtracks, including The Hobbit, The Hunger , arranger, and musical director. He MINd & SouL CHoIR Games, and Snow White and The Huntsman. Clara’s fifth album, A has been musical director for productions Hum about mine Ears, recorded with the Britten Sinfonia, Chorus at the Royal National Theatre, Donmar, the The 100-strong Vox Holloway will be joined in this concert by “Vox Holloway is a non-audition choir, open to all, because of Dissent and Nigel Kennedy will be released in March 2016 a Old Vic, the Linbury the Mind & Soul Choir, directed by Lea Cornthwaite, made up of singing together is such a fundamental human urge and practice choral work based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Studio, the Edinburgh Festival Theatre, health professionals at the Maudsley Hospital (closely linked to - and a huge benefit to mental health for all of us. I’m really and the Royal Alexandra Theatre, Toronto, the Bethlem Royal Hospital, the original “Bedlam”), specialising delighted that the Mind & Soul Choir, comprising singers who NICHoLAS GARRETT studied voice and and for four Sondheim musicals at RADA. For BBC Radio 4 in psychiatric training, together with other staff, service users, dedicate their working lives to mental health sufferers, are piano at Trinity College of Music and is a he composed and performed the signature music for Murder friends, family, carers and local people. The mission of the Choir joining us for this concert. A real celebration of the indissoluble Wolfson award winner. Initially a member on the Orient Express and Sad Cypress. As a founder-member is to bring awareness to mental health issues and to break down connection between music and emotional well-being.” of the Swingle Singers, Nicholas made his of Commedia, a flute, cello and piano trio, he won the Park stigma surrounding mental health problems. (Harvey Brough) operatic debut at the ROH in Palestrina and Lane Group Young Musicians award and he plays organ and at ENO as Angelotti in Tosca with Sir David harpsichord continuo for the Woodmansterne Collection. For McVicar. He has sung numerous roles for the three years Michael was a member of Piano Circus, with whom he made five CDs, and he has recorded Stravinsky’s Les Noces most creative. Currently CHROMA is recording two discs of for Decca, with Vladimir Ashkenazy. He has recently recorded their own of Appalachian and gypsy music and his own transcription of A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night brewing all sorts of exciting things for the new year. with Peter French. JEREMY CoRNES received his musical ZoE MARTLEW Cellist, performer, education at the Royal College of Music, composer, educator and blogger, the where he studied with Alan Cumberland, increasingly uncategorisable Zoë Martlew Michael Skinner and Kevin Hathway. travels the globe playing her own music and Since leaving college Jeremy has been that written for her, working with some of the much in demand as a freelance musician. world’s most renowned contemporary music He has appeared with most of the major ensembles, improvisation, film, electronica, symphony orchestras in the Country, performing regularly multi-media, pop and rock artists, dance and theatre companies. with the London Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, She’s a regular guest commentator for BBC TV and radio, her Chamber Orchestra of Europe, John Wilson Orchestra and the one woman cabaret show Revue Z plays at home and abroad, Britten Sinfonia. He was a member of the Opera ‘80 touring and she’s recently been taken on by Schott publishing as a company (now English Touring Opera) for three seasons composer. She’s in demand for a wide variety of educational from 1986 to 1988, and has performed at twenty five seasons activities, is NYO cello tutor and Artistic Director of the Saigon of Glyndebourne Festival Opera with the LPO. He has also Chamber Music Festival in Vietnam. She studied at the RCM, performed extensively abroad. Jeremy has been Professor Clare College Cambridge, RAM and Chopin Academy in of Orchestral Percussion and head of the Drum/Percussion Warsaw. Department at the London College of Music since 2003.

ELENA HuLL is a double bass player from LEA CoRNTHWAITE is a singer, choir Somerset. She attended the Yehudi Menuhin director and vocal animateur who works School and subsequently the Royal College with children as young as 5 to adults of 95, of Music. Since then she has been all over the singers and non-singers alike. He has also place playing all sorts of music. She has been worked on many projects with Opera North, principal bass in the Trondheim Symphony ENO, the LSO, Sing Up, Glyndebourne, Orchestra, in the John Wilson Orchestra, a Garsington Opera, the Barbican Centre, the soloist with London Sinfonietta and on Radio 3, playing by Southbank Centre, National Youth Theatre, Spitalfields Music, memory in the proms with Aurora Orchestra. She is a member Hackney Music Development Trust, Youth Music & many others. of the group CHROMA which is where she is allowed to be the Lea has a particular interest in singing for health and wellbeing.

A NoTE of THANKS

Vox Holloway would like to thank Oscar Cainer (sound) and rehearsal sectional leaders; Hannah Barton for graphic Haavard Helle (video), and all our soloists and musicians. design, Trilogy Print Solutions Ltd for printing the flyers and We salute Gary Bridgewood and Beskydy, for busking as programme and Jif Thompson for stage management. We are the audience arrives - all proceeds to the charities we are very grateful for the support of our patrons Lee Hall, Kevin supporting. Thank you! Thanks also to Dave & Pat Tomlinson McCloud and with particular thanks to Emma Thompson for and the wardens, PCC and community of St Luke’s; our her enthusiasm for this project. Trilogy Print Solution Limited would like to wish the

Vox HollowayTrilogy Print Choir Solution Limited every would success like to wish the in the future Vox Holloway Choir every success in the future

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