Coffee Break Concerts – Songs of Solace and Spring. Episode 10: Calming the Tempest

Shakespeare’s The Tempest links performances by Jade Anouka (including the premiere of her new poem ‘This Brave Vessel’); Athena Stevens reading Sylvia Plath; and tenor Joseph Doody singing Guy Woolfenden’s Songs of Ariel, written for actor Ian Charleson as part of a legendary 1978 Royal Shakespeare Company production of the play, with Rosabella Gregory’s incidental music ‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair’ introducing the stormy theme. The programme moves from storm to tranquillity, with actor Fiona Shaw introducing three exquisite poems of renewal by Emily Dickinson, and the world premiere of Nicholas O’Neill’s song cycle of the same, performed by mezzo Flora McIntosh accompanied by the composer on piano.