In a couple of weeks (in fact a week this Wednesday) I will be performing in the Loughborough University Choir’s summer performance (details). The main piece will be a performance of Twelve Trees by Katy Lavinia Cooper (words by Catriona Downie). It was commissioned to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the UK choral charity Sing for Pleasure and was first learned and performed at a workshop they did in the summer of 2024. The LU choir has been learning it this season and will be one of the first choirs to put on a public performance of the work. If you happen to be in Dublin instead of Loughborough apparently a choir is also performing it there on 21 May!

It has some fascinating bits of music although it would be fair to say that each of the twelve pieces has its challenges. Sometimes it is fitting the words in or finding the starting note for a phrase but there are also lots of pieces with irregular time signatures. For example “May: The Eildon Tree”, celebrating a particular Scottish hawthorn, starts with alternating 3/8 and 3/2 with a little burst of 9/8 and 5/4 before “settling down” into 6/8 and 2/4. That isn’t easy to count although at least it could be described as a learning experience!

Another challenge has been that only one of the songs from the suite has been released online so we can’t go and listen to a full choir recording of the rest of them. September’s song remembers the Sycamore Gap tree. This is the one for which two men were very recently convicted for illegally felling it in 2023 and it ends in a poignant way with the words gradually fading out and only silent actions being left. You can watch this one online: