shared ground on Radio 3 today

around 2.50pm today on BBC Radio 3, the recording of Alec Roth's and Vikram Seth's Shared Ground, taken at the 2007 Lichfield Festival, will finally be broadcast. Performed by Ex Cathedra, and with interjections from violinist Philippe Honore performing Roth's Ponticelli for solo violin, these pieces were musically inspired by the solo violin and double choir works of J S Bach with Vikram's texts based on George Herbert. If you are listening earlier you'll also hear Ex Cathedra perform Bach's Komm, Jesu, Komm!, BWV229.

The poem above both captures and represents the image of a lone oak tree reflected in a small lake of still water, with the tree existing above and below the water line. Below is the actual oak tree referred to in Seth's poem, but without the reflection from the storm the evening before. More of Seth's Shared Ground poems with an interview can be found here.

champion of champions

last night at the 2008 Jaguar Land Rover Awards for Arts & Business, Ex Cathedra and Sandvik Ltd deservedly won the Business Link A&B Sustainability Award. Sandvik has been Ex Cathedra's principal education sponsor for nearly 20 years, so this award was a long time coming. That they went on to win the Jaguar Champion of Champions 2008 Award at the end of the evening was even better, and is great for the profile of Ex Cathedra (on the cusp of its 40th season), for Ex Cathedra Education, and hopefully for their ongoing relationship with Sandvik. As the A&B brochure detailed

At the forefront of this partnership is 'Singing Playgrounds', an inclusive programme that changes the culture of singing in a school community and which includes training and equipping children with the necessary skills to lead games in the playground.

There is a little more about Singing Playgrounds here and here. It really is excellent, formative and unique.
I mention all of this because Ex Cathedra Education, with the support of Sandvik, helped the Lichfield Festival create our inaugural Festival Chorus between January and July this year. Without their support and experience, the chorus would never have off had such a wonderful start, and we certainly would not have achieved a performance of the calibre we did. So, hearty congratulations to Ex Cathedra and Sandvik and thanks again for your support.