Send Back the Echo: Exploring Loss, Deafness and Alienation

Marking the launch of their second album Renewal, the versatile and acclaimed ensemble United Strings of Europe presents a programme that explores themes of loss and alienation through new works and arrangements for string orchestra. Commissioned by the United Strings of Europe and released as a film during lockdown as part of BBC Arts’ Culture in Quarantine, Jasmin Rodgman’s send back the echo invites a moment of invites a moment of reflection on the alienation faced by the deaf community and people of colour within music and the arts. The ensemble will be joined by deaf actor Vilma Jackson who will give an account of Beethoven’s struggle with hearing loss in British Sign Language. Themes of death and remembrance are explored through Peteris Vasks’ haunting Viatore (Traveler) which sees human existence as an essentially solitary voyage, alongside a string arrangement Henry Purcell’s Dido’s Lament and Osvaldo Golijov’s Last Round, a homage to tango giant Astor Piazzolla. Music from the ensemble’s new album includes a bespoke adaptation of Felix Mendelssohn’s grief-ridden final string quartet which he wrote following the sudden death of his sister Fanny, and a brand new arrangement of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw’s choral work ‘and the swallow’.