Songs of Solace

Soprano Grace Davidson sings a pair of moving song cycles along with the Guildhall Saxophone Ensemble, the Guildhall Percussion Ensemble and GSMD’s professor of saxophone Christian Forshaw. The first is Michael Nyman’s Six Celan Songs (1990), setting poems by Romanian Holocaust survivor Paul Celan. That’s followed by ‘Songs of Solace’: Forshaw’s musical response to the book ‘A Song for Jenny’ by Julie Nicholson, whose daughter Jenny was killed in the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005. Containing texts by Shakespeare, Tennyson, the Book of Ecclesiastes, Nicholson and others, the ten thoughtful pieces are melodic but incorporate serial techniques, microtonal music, unusual scales and improvisation.