On March 5th there was a performance of my song cycle ‘The Unknown Bird’ to words by Edward Thomas. This was the first of many settings I have made of his poetry and is for voice with flute, viola and harp. The performance was with baritone John Lofthouse and the Aurora trio and held at the church in Steep (Hampshire) where Thomas lived before he went off to France in 1917 and the War that killed him. The concert also included the premiere of ‘Strange Bridge’ a cycle setting three other Edward Thomas poems with piano.

On January 15th MAS string orchestra will be performing my ‘Another Orpheus’. The title comes from Shelley’s ‘Hellas’, written to raise money for the Greek War of Independence (during which Byron famously perished!). From the poem I took the line ‘Another Orpheus sings again, and loves and weeps and dies’.Tickets are available from www.trybooking.co.uk/BJSI

My trio for flute, viola and harp Romantique gets its first performance on Friday 12th November played by the Aurora Trio at 7.30 at St Luke’s, Brighton. Also on the programme are trios by Arnold Bax, Malcolm Lipkin and members of New Music Brighton. It will be played again by the Trilogy Ensemble in the Late Music series in York in 2022.

I have recently set two poems by Isaac Rosenberg, the artist, poet and reluctant soldier who was killed in WWI. The first is the idealistic ‘My Days’, written before the war, and the second is extracts from his long and savage ‘Dead Man’s Dump’ written in 1917 and bitter with experience. The settings are for baritone and piano and join my recent settings of three poems by Edward Thomas (‘Strange Bridge’), also for baritone and piano.