The Foliate Bosses Julian Perry – Stevie Wishart
24 May - 29 June 2025 at Snape Maltings, part of the Aldeburgh Festival 2025
 
Artist Julian Perry and composer Stevie Wishart are collaborating to create a powerful and emotionally charged installation at Britten Pears Arts from 24 May to 29 June as part of this year’s Aldeburgh Festival.  
 
The Foliate Bosses will be installed in several places at Snape Maltings and is a continuation of Perry’s ongoing study of coastal erosion, that sees our crumbling coasts as emblems of an environment in crisis. Perry has been working for two years to create a series of large paintings recording the natural life that is falling from the East Anglian cliffs due to coastal erosion. The centrepiece of this project has been the creation of his “Foliate Bosses”; complex paintings that gather fallen trees, wild plants and mud into roughly circular images. The four works take a form that knowingly echoes medieval roof bosses.
 
Wishart, long associated with early music, has created an original sound world conflating her recordings of rare and endangered birds and her own original music. During the run of the show Wishart will perform a specially commissioned piece responding to Perry’s works and her own heartfelt engagement with the environmental crisis (23 June 2025). 
 
Perry and Wishart’s collaboration is rooted in their mutual commitment to ancient forms as the inspiration from which they create contemporary visuals and music. Perry’s paintings have a huge debt to Northern Renaissance painting (Grunewald, Durer) and Wishart is a world expert on the 12th Century music of Hildegard of Bingen.
 
Perry has spent the last 15 years studying costal erosion as emblematic of the widest environmental crisis.Wishart for this project will be creating original music inspired by Hildegard of Bingen. Tying her music to the very landscape that inspired Perry's paintings, Wishart will be integrating within the music her recordings of endangered Suffolk birds - bitterns and nightingales.
 
About Julian Perry
Julian Perry's paintings of specific locations and natural phenomenon, often under environmental threat or affected by human interventions, explore the strained relationships between people and nature. Since 2012, coastal erosion and the impact of climate change have dominated Perry's work. These themes took centre stage in works Perry exhibited in 2015 at the Venice Biennale, and in 2022 at the Southampton City Art Gallery. www.julianperry.info
 
Stevie Wishart is a well-known British composer with her roots in improvisation and early music. A performer on the violin, and the hurdy-gurdy, (a medieval stringed keyboard instrument), she has a distinctive combination of a classical foundation with a contemporary, improvisational overlay, drawing inspiration from the natural world which makes her an interesting and versatile musician. She is currently engaged in setting up Greenland Music, a project based at the Grade II* listed Greenland Fishery building in King’s Lynn, West Norfolk, dedicated to the development of music, nature and the environment.
www.steviewishartmusic.com
 
About Britten Pears Arts
Britten Pears Arts is a pioneering music, arts and heritage charity based on the Suffolk coast at two popular, historic visitor destinations: The Red House and Snape Maltings. Britten Pears Arts emerged from the creative partnership of Benjamin Britten, one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, and his professional and personal partner, singer Peter Pears. Britten and Pears shared a progressive vision for music and the arts to be useful, helping people enhance and bring joy into their lives. Britten and Pears’ vision inspires all our activity, from work with the local communities to our national leadership roles in the fields of talent development and music, health and wellbeing. www.brittenpearsarts.org
 
 
Image: Work in progress, Foliate Boss III, Oil on panel 157 x 122cm

The Hermes Experiment & Shiva Feshareki

The Hermes Experiment is a young and vibrant ensemble who will be laying at the Barbican this week. Amongst the set is Stevie Wishart's Eurostar - A journey between cities in sound, a piece created from found sound travelling between Paris and Brussels

Revel in the idiosyncratic sounds of vibrant contemporary quartet The Hermes Experiment, as they collaborate on a world premiere with composer and turntablist Shiva Feshareki.

Milton Court Concert Hall
Thursday 26 January 7.30 pm
2 hours 0 minutes
The Hermes Experiment is Anne Denholm harp, Marianne Schofield double bass, Oliver Pashley clarinet, Héloïse Werner soprano, Shiva Feshareki turntables and electronics

Programme
Oliver Leith Uh huh, Yeah
Stevie Wishart Eurostar – a journey between cities in sound
Mira Calix DMe
Jethro Cooke & The Hermes Experiment Metropolis
Shiva Feshareki New work (world premiere, Barbican co-commission*)*Co-commissioned by The Hermes Experiment and supported by the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust, the Marchus Trust and the Hinrichsen Foundation

More details here
https://studentpulselondon.co.uk/index.php/partners/partners/barbican/the-hermes-experiment-shiva-feshareki

Six Brandenburgs: Six Commissions.
Commissioned by and performed at Music@Malling
It was thrilling to hear from director, conductor and violinist Tom Kemp from Music at Malling about the enthusiastic reception for the Six Brandenburgs : Six Commissions piece which includes Gold & Precious Silver by Stevie Wishart who was one of six prominent composers who were asked to compose a piece relating to the famous Bach Brandenburg Concertos.

In April 2022, the complete Brandenburg Concertos were performed alongside six new works by Brian Elias, Michael Price, Deborah Pritchard, Daniel Kidane, Joseph Phibbs and Stevie Wishart in 3 concerts in the iconic setting of Malling Abbey. 

The concerts received outstanding reviews in the national press.  

Fiona Maddocks gave the concerts 5 stars in The Observer “…the music superbly performed by Chamber Domaine.” 

David Nice in The Artsdesk gave another 5 star review describing the concerts as: "A colossal achievement made up of seemingly effortless and joyous playing meeting with an equally joyous audience response.” 

Michael White in The Catholic Herald commented: “..one of the best musical experiences I have had in ages. Everything felt cherished and delivered from the heart by the formidable musicians of Chamber Domaine."

The full reviews are here:
Fiona Maddocks, The Observer
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/apr/30/manchester-collective-abel-selaocoe-the-oracle-qeh-queen-elizabeth-hall-london-review-music-at-malling-six-brandeburgs-six-commissions-music-x-museums-british-library-academy-of-st-martin-in-the-fields-zeffman-beethoven

David Nice, The Artsdesk
https://theartsdesk.com/classical-music/six-brandenburgs-six-commissions-chamber-domaine-malling-abbey-review-metaphysical

Michael White, The Catholic Herald
https://catholicherald.co.uk/an-outstanding-opera-and-some-memorable-interpretations-of-bach/

Please find below links to concert highlights:
Concert I: https://vimeo.com/744583790
Chamber Domaine 
Bach - Brandenburg Concerto No.1
Brian Elias - Sequel 
Bach - Brandenburg Concerto No.2
Michael Price - The Malling Diamond

Concert II: https://vimeo.com/744606361
Chamber Domaine
Bach - Brandenburg Concerto No.3
Deborah Pritchard - Illumination
Brandenburg - Concerto No.4
Daniel Kidane - Concerto Grosso

Concert III: https://vimeo.com/744615961
Chamber Domaine
Bach - Brandenburg Concerto No.5
Joseph Phibbs - Bach Shadows
Bach - Brandenburg Concerto No.6
Stevie Wishart - Gold and Precious Silver

View the programme
https://www.paperturn-view.com/?pid=Mjc279400
Chamber Domaine will be performing this project in festivals and venues in the UK and Europe in 2024/25 including the Wigmore Hall.  

Colourscape at Sevenoaks Festival
Saturday 18 June 2022
A day of music with the extraordinary Hurdy-Gurdy player, Stevie Wishart and movement artist, Jemima Brown
Colourscape comes to the Sevenoaks Festival for the ninth year running.
A day of free-flowing music in our Moonarooni Colourscape structure will open the 2022 Sevenoaks Festival

To check the Sevenoaks Festival website for more events and directions click HERE
LOCATION: Vine Gardens, Holly Bush Lane, Sevenoaks
TIMES: 11am to 4pm; Saturday June 22nd
ADMISSION: £5 adults; £2.50 children

STEVIE WISHART
Creative Retreat in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, UK 

Stevie Wishart and Ensemble Variances's Thierry Pécou share a creative retreat at Aldeburgh
By invitation from First Light Festival, composers Stevie Wishart from Brussels and Cambridge and Thierry Pécou (Ensemble Variances) from Rouen in Normandy, France undertook a joint creative retreat courtesy of First Light Festival in Lowestoft Suffolk and Britten Pears Arts at the Red Studio in Aldeburgh, Suffolk.

After a four-day research stay by Stevie who walked the Iken marshes around Snape and Aldeburgh, observing and recording birds, their songs and behaviours as well as other wildlife and atmospheres at different times of the day, especially rich at dawn and dusk and guided by a bird expert from Minsmere, former trumpeter David Staff, local bird enthusiast and photographer David Burns, neighbours at the Red House John and Chris, and Griff, an old hand,  she was joined by Thierry and together they walked the marshes, rose at 3am to catch the dawn chorus at Dunwich, an early morning walk to North Warren and then Shingle Street in search of bittern and then a late night trip to hear nightjars.

​Stevie and Thierry stayed at Church Walk in Aldeburgh, and in the Red Studio in the grounds of the Red House, formerly home of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears who built spaces for their friends to stay and develop their work in the peace of the Aldeburgh surroundings.

Both composers work with birdsong and other sounds of nature, recently in a new work from Stevie premiered at Bristol New Music:  Gardez la distance -  a piece for piano, clarinet and flute plus recorded birdsong and is the result of a study into how blackbirds learn to sing.

First Light Festival is a free 24-hour multi-arts festival in the beautiful coastal setting of Lowestoft - 18-19 June 2022

This retreat opportunity available for Stevie and Thierry  has been kindly made possible by First Light Festival and  Britten Pears Arts.

​May 2022