Photograph: ORA Singers by Nick Rutter Artists: ORA Singers and Suzi Digby OBE. With guest composer and cuatro player, Cristian Grases The award-winning ORA Singers and Suzi Digby OBE return to Malta to celebrate ten years of music making with a choral highlights programme featuring key works. Alongside Renaissance polyphony by Tallis, Byrd, and Gibbons sit 8 contemporary pieces from their ground-breaking 100 commissions catalogue, including, tonight, the world première of Lucis Creator by Cristian Grases.
Prior to the performance, the St John’s Cathedral Foundation will be opening up the Caravaggio Wing for patrons to visit, where you can watch ‘Meet Caravaggio’: a short docu-drama on the life of the artist in Malta between July 1607 and October 1608, first as a novice, then as a knight of the Order, thereafter, his dramatic escape from imprisonment in Fort St Angelo. The Oratory houses ‘The Beheading of St John the Baptist’, by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, c. 1608 – oil on canvas, 520cm x 360cm, as well as his ‘St Jerome Writing’ c. 1607 – oil on canvas, 117cm x 157 cm.
ORA Singers and The Three Palaces Festival are grateful for the support of the Michael Marks Charitable Trust in supporting the commission and premiere of this piece.
ORA SINGERS
Soprano Lucy Cox, Sarah Keating, Natalie Houlston, Isabelle Gibber, Anna Grieve, Rachel Haworth
Alto Hannah Cooke, Kim Porter, Sophie Timms, Joy Sutcliffe
Tenor Benedict Munden, Jack Granby, Edward Beswick, Nick Todd
Bass Will Dawes, Simon Grant, Jonathan Pratt, Tim Murphy
William Byrd Ave Verum
Roxanna Panufnik Kyrie after Byrd *
Thomas Tallis God grant with grace
Kerry Andrew Archbishop Parker's Psalme 150 *
Orland Gibbons O clap your hands
Cecilia McDowall O clap your hands *
Plainchant In paradisum
Thomas Tallis In manus tuas, Domine
Brett Dean Into thine hand *
Kerensa Briggs Media vita
Jonathan Dove My love is mine (solo)
Antoine Brumel Sicut lilium inter spinas
John Barber Sicut lilium *
John Rutter Hymn to the Creator of Light
Cristian Grases Lucis Creator * (World Premiere)
Thomas Tallis Te Lucis ante terminum
Alec Roth Night Prayer *
Joanna Marsh All shall be well *
Roderick Williams Ave Verum Corpus Re-imagined * *ORA Commission
Programme Note
ORA Singers’ achievement in commissioning and performing 100 new compositions from an impressively wide range of composers must be unprecedented in the entire history of music. It has been an extraordinarily imaginative and generous gift to the composers, and indeed to choirs and audiences everywhere. – Sir John Rutter
The most mellifluous vocal group this side of heaven – The Times of London
We begin the concert programme as we began ORA's very first recording sessions, with the music of William Byrd. A giant of the renaissance, Byrd appeared to Suzi and I as the ideal place to start as the reference point for the contemporary composers we had earmarked to begin our decade-long reflection project. His short motet "Ave Verum Corpus" stands as a miniature masterpiece of respectful restraint at the head of our set list, a testament to the composer's skill of both homophonic and polyphonic writing. Perfectly written, with a secret defiance to the Protestant reign in which Byrd operated within. There can be no more fitting tribute to the music of the renaissance that we have spent much of the last ten years performing, alongside music for the new choral golden age of the twenty first century. We follow this piece with a commission appropriately called "Kyrie after Byrd", written by Roxanna Panufnik as a companion piece to the Kyrie in Byrd's Five Part Mass for our "Upheld by stillness" recording (HMW 906102).
This piece naughtily translates Byrd's writing into the twenty first century with clever chromatic twists, adding a bass part from the original to give it ever greater depth harmonically. The piece ends with quiet reverence, setting the scene nicely for our next piece, "God grant with grace" by Thomas Tallis, the eighth tune from the nine harmonised by Tallis as an addition to the metrical psalter by Archbishop Matthew Parker, published in 1567 by the London printer John Day. For our "Many Our The Wonders" album (HMM 905284), focussing on the music of Tallis, we commissioned the young British singer/composer Kerry Andrew to set Parker's old English translation of Psalm 150 and she created a piece full or religious cheer as befits the text, mentioning recorders, cymbals, tambourine (tymbrell), lute, harp, trumpets. All these contribute to the feel of a rowdy celebration.
We continue into the exuberant world of Orlando Gibbons "O Clap Your Hands". Recorded on our most recent recording, "Songs of Angels" (ORC 100423), this is a psalm setting full of riotous energy, probably written for the 1622 Oxford ceremony honouring Gibbons' colleague William Heather. Here we place it beside a commissioned reflection by Cecilia McDowall, who uses the text in a similarly joyful way musically, albeit cast in the clothes of a composer writing four hundred years later. Her call to arms for the whole choir to "O Clap Your Hands" at the end of the piece is particularly arresting and, again, a suitable reference point for our celebrations.
Deliberately breaking the mood of festivity, we now enter a section in the programme where the subject matter turns funereal, opening with the "In Paradisum" plainchant. This, in turn, gives way to Tallis' setting of In Manus Tuas, published in his 1575 Cantinones Sacrae, upon which Brett Dean has written a commission "Into Thine Hand". As ORA's 100th commission, this particular piece stands as a tribute not only to the whole concept of ORA100 but also to Thomas Tallis, for whom no less than Byrd once set the following words "Tallis is dead and music dies" in his musical elegy "Ye Sacred Music". We close the section with a setting of the amazing text of Media Vita in morte sumus, which serves as a stark, solemn meditation on human fragility and a humble prayer for divine mercy at the hour of our death. Set by composers as diverse as John Sheppard and Nicholas Gombert, today we sing a 2015 setting by Kerensa Briggs, a composer we have recently commissioned to write for us in 2027 as we look to the next decade.
One of the first composers we commissioned for the ORA reflection concept was Jonathan Dove and his work Vadam et circuibo can be heard on our "Desires - a Song of Songs collection" recording (HMM 905316). Another setting by him from this rich source of texts which has featured in various ORA programmes over the years is his solo voice folk-song like setting "My Love Is Mine" and we are delighted to include it again today. This leads effortlessly into Brumel's almost timeless Sicut Lilum, a simple piece of four part writing from the fifteenth century. For our Song of Songs recording above we asked the young British composer John Barber to write a response upon this and he set the same text as Brumel but focussed his musical spirit upon the concept of the lily amongst thorns.
As John says in the sleeve note to the recording "to me it suggests you can't have faith without doubt, and you can't have love without the possibility of losing it". The enigmatic ending of the piece sums this up rather beautifully and leaves us hanging with these ambiguities. An obvious thematic link exists between music written depicting light and darkness, and our next collection of pieces reflects some of the powerful representations of this subject matter. John Rutter, a good friend to ORA Singers, wrote his unaccompanied eight-part work "Hymn to the Creator of Light" for a special evensong in Gloucester Cathedral during which a new stained-glass window in memory of the English composer Herbert Howells was dedicated, with the theme of light an obvious appropriateness to the occasion.
Opening with a mysterious, quasi-plainsong effect the second choir is answered as if from on high by the first choir, and Rutter's homage to Howells' distinctive harmonic language is obvious throughout. This leads to a central section, Allegro energetico, in which the two choirs respond to each other with a back and forth dialogue, and eventually subsides to a quieter final section where the chorale Schmücke dich by Johann Crüger is delicately reharmonised by Rutter, bringing the work to a peaceful conclusion, anticipating the soul\s entry into heaven. A commission for this evening's performance is Cristian Grases' Lucis Creator, on the same subject matter as Rutter's setting but cast in a very different idiom, with energy provided by clapping motifs and the use of the unusual instrument of the cuatro, a small guitar-like four stringed instrument from Latin America. The final pairing in this section is Thomas Tallis' elegant compline setting of Te Lucis Ante Terminum from 1575, upon which Alec Roth wrote for us a macaronic reflection entitled Night Prayer, using different rhythmic word stresses in both Latin and English. In each verse the Latin is sung in strict two-part canon against which the treatment of the English is more free to leave us with a truly beguiling vision of the night.
As we come to the end of our programme surveying the last decade of ORA's activity, we finish with two award winning pieces, both prize winners at the prestigious Ivor Novello Awards. These are pieces we are immensely proud to have brought into the choral canon. First is Joanna Marsh's "All Shall Be Well", which sets quotations from Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love. Revolving around the three part mediaeval "Stella Maris Nuncuparis," which dates from Julian of Norwich's time c.1350, this clever setting was first performed with social distancing regulations in place during one of the lockdowns in 2021 and its text stood as a beacon of hope for us all at a testing time. Our final piece in the programme brings us full circle back to our first recording sessions and the opening piece in the programme. Roderick Williams "Ave Verum Corpus Re-imagined" has been a favourite with our audiences (and singers) since our foundation and was performed at our very first concert at the Tower of London. Roddy delivered us a work of great homage to William Byrd and his original composition, particularly delighting in the natural accentuation of the syllables and powerful gestures such as Byrd's false relations. This is one of many of our commissions that has been taken up by other choirs and had many performances since our premiere. To Roddy, and all the composers featured in the programme and in our commissioning body at large, we thank you. Floreat ORA Singers for the next decade.
David Clegg
Artistic Advisor to ORA Singers THE VENUE
At the heart of Valletta, St John’s Co-Cathedral is one of Malta’s greatest artistic and architectural monuments: an extraordinary expression of faith, power and the international character of the Order of St John. Built as the Order’s Conventual Church and dedicated to St John the Baptist, it was designed by the Maltese architect and military engineer Girolamo Cassar and completed in 1577. Its austere Mannerist façade, flanked by twin bell towers, reflects the military character of the newly founded city and gives little indication of the splendour within.
During the 17th century, the originally restrained interior was transformed into a breathtaking Baroque ensemble. Walls, chapels, and monuments were enriched with marble, gilding, sculpture, and painting, while the floor became an extraordinary tapestry of elaborate marble tombstones commemorating Knights of the Order. Yet this magnificence was more than a display of wealth and prestige. St John’s was conceived as a great monument to God, a setting in which precious materials, extraordinary craftsmanship, and the talents of exceptional artists were brought together for the greater glory of the divine.
Dominating the barrel-vaulted nave is Mattia Preti’s magnificent cycle depicting the life of St John the Baptist. Through dramatic narrative, glowing colour and illusionistic effects, Preti seemingly dissolves the architecture, transforming the vault into a vast sacred theatre.
Adjoining the church is the Oratory of the Decollation of St John the Baptist, begun in 1602 as a place of devotion and meditation for the Knights, subsequently transformed through an elaborate Baroque decorative programme of painting, gilded carving, and richly worked architectural surfaces.
The Oratory’s supreme masterpiece is Caravaggio’s ‘The Beheading of St John the Baptist’. Monumental in scale and startling in its psychological intensity, it is Caravaggio’s largest known painting and the only work he is known to have signed. Darkness, stark illumination, and restrained human drama transform the martyrdom into an unforgettable theatrical encounter. It is the epitome of light and darkness in artistic terms, made still more powerful by the fact that it remains in the very place for which it was painted.
Alongside it, is Caravaggio’s striking ‘St Jerome Writing’, a profoundly contemplative work in which the ageing saint emerges from darkness through the artist’s characteristic chiaroscuro. Caravaggio arrived in Malta in 1607 and was admitted to the Order as a Knight of Obedience the following year.
Together, the Co-Cathedral and its Oratory unite architecture, painting, sculpture and craftsmanship into an extraordinary whole: a monument to the Knights of St John, a supreme expression of the Maltese Baroque and, above all, a magnificent monument to faith and the glory of God.
ORA Singers
The award-winning ORA Singers is recognised for its modern take on the centuries-long choral tradition, and was born out of a belief that we are in a second golden age of choral music, matching that of the Renaissance. It is one of the world’s foremost commissioners of contemporary choral music, which it often performs alongside Renaissance masterpieces in its celebrated concerts and recordings. Since its description as "a musical comet", ORA Singers has continued to blaze a trail as one of the UK’s leading vocal ensembles. Directed by Suzi Digby OBE, the group was named ‘Ensemble of the Year’ at the 2018 Opus Klassik awards, and has received critical acclaim both for its "unfailingly elegant" performances and its “superb and exciting” recordings, most recently winning the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik for its 2023 disc, Sanctissima. 2026 marks the group’s 10th Anniversary and the completion of their renowned 100 Commissions Catalogue. The 100th commission, Into thine hand, by Brett Dean, was premiered at the group’s special Anniversary Concert at Wigmore Hall on 24th October.
Suzi Digby OBE
Suzi Digby was born in Japan and lived in Hong Kong, Mexico and the Philippines before settling in London, Cambridge and Bath. She is an internationally renowned choral conductor and music educator. She has trail-blazed the revival of singing in UK schools and the community over three decades. Suzi founded the following pioneering National Arts/education organisations: The Voices Foundation (the UK's leading Primary Music Education Charity); Voce Chamber Choir; Vocal Futures (nurturing young audiences for Classical Music); Singing4Success (leadership and Accelerated Learning for Corporates) and London Youth Choirs (a pyramid of 5 choirs [aged 8-22], serving multiple diverse communities in London's 33 boroughs). Her professional vocal consort, ORA Singers (commissioning choral works as reflections of Renaissance masterworks) won the Opus Klassik 'Best Ensemble of the Year', 2018, and the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik for their 2023 album, Sanctissima. Cristian Grases Cristian Grases joined the USC Thornton faculty in the Fall 2010 semester and is the former Vice Dean for the Division of Classical Music and Composition. He is currently a professor and Chair of the Department of Choral Music, and conducts the USC Thornton Chamber Singers. Born in Venezuela, he earned degrees from the Simón Bolívar University (MM) in Caracas, Venezuela, and the University of Miami (DMA). Dr. Grases has participated in numerous festivals, workshops, competitions, and events as a guest conductor, clinician, adjudicator, and conducting pedagogue in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania. He has also presented sessions in the World Choral Symposia in Denmark, Argentina, and South Korea. Additionally, and at several ACDA regional and national conventions. He is an award-winning conductor and composer, and has been commissioned to write for several prestigious organizations such as the Piedmont Children's Chorus, the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, the Golden Bridge Choir, the ORA Singers, and the Los Angeles Master Chorale, to name just a few. His works have been performed world-wide in prestigious stages such as the Walt Disney Concert Hall, The Taipei National Performing Arts Center, and Carnegie Hall. In 2013 Dr. Grases started a new Choral Series entitled “The Choral Music of Latin America and the Caribbean” published by Gentry Publications as an editorial outlet for Latin American choral repertoire. Dr. Grases was elected into the Board of Directors of the International Federation for Choral Music in 2008 and served as a member of the Executive Board as a Vice President representing the region of Latin America and the Caribbean until December of 2020.