With our spring programme for 2026, Melting Vox explores how musicians are inspired by the sights, sounds and experiences of the natural world.
We start our journey with the ancient prayer of St Patrick called ‘The Deer’s Cry’, set to music by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, who mixes sound and silence in a deeply personal spiritual meditation. John Tavener’s iconic ‘The Lamb’ is similarly meditative, alongside the lonely Finnish landscapes of ‘Mieli’ by Liisa Matveinen, and the impressionistic colours of Charles Stanford’s ‘The Blue Bird’.
There is also great joy, from the raucous Canadian springtime (Stephen Chatman’s ‘Due north’) and the playgrounds of the Basque Country (‘Txoriak’), to the summer streams of ‘Le Baylère’ and the incessant buzzing of the Real Groups’ ‘Bumblebee’.
And throughout our journey we are accompanied by birdsong: the dancing sparrows of Sarah Quartel’s hypnotic ‘Songbird’, the whistling of ‘Blackbird’ by the Beatles, and the song of hope in the darkness of wartime London and the American civil...
