Travel In Light With Norwich Choir

Would you like to travel in light?

The Voice Project Choir's new piece explores three very different locations in the same medieval Norwich Street.

In one of the darkest parts of the year, when the post-festive blues can really set in, The Voice Project Choir offer to take you on an uplifting multi venue journey that will inspire with the promise of spring to come.

The 150 voices of the choir, plus soloists and guest musicians will perform their new piece, Travels in Light, the final part of a trilogy of pieces about sleep, dreaming and waking and the bits in between on 20 January. There will be three separate performances at 5pm; 7pm and 9pm.

The show is a multi-venue secular performance piece that will be staged in the three very different churches on Norwich's medieval Prince's Street - St George's Tombland, St Peter Hungate and the United Reformed Church with the choir leading the audience between them. Each of these buildings has a significantly different atmosphere and acoustic properties which will help highlight Travels in Light's reflections on the time of the year: the sleep of winter, the dark nights and the short days yet an ultimate awakening with the promise of spring to come.

All the music for the concerts has been specially written for the Voice Project Choir.

Voice Project co-director Jon said explained 'Each of these buildings has its own sound and atmospheric qualities, brilliant for a choral piece as these buildings were literally made for singing in.'

"St George's is a living church. Parts of the building date from the 13th century and it has clear but gentle acoustic properties. On the other hand, St Peter Hungate, also dating back to at least the 13th century is empty, closed as a working church in the 1930's, giving it a much livelier sound with a much longer reverberation time. The United Reformed Church is a totally different type of building built in the early 19th century. It is bright, open and airy with a gallery and much bigger windows than the other two.

My co-director Sian Croose and I explored this area extensively when we were planning and researching our outdoor promenade show Singing the City for the 2012 Norfolk & Norwich Festival. The history of the area is fascinating and we're hoping that Travels in Light will reflect this. As you can probably tell we're really enjoying making the show for this wonderful street!"

Inspiration for the show came from a quote from painter Paul Nash 'The divisions W. May hold between the waking world and that of the dream are not there; they are porous; in a word, they are not there.'

The Voice Project was set up in 2008 as an educational education and performance organisation by music professionals Sian Croose and Jonathan Baker. Since then it has become one of the best known community choirs in East Anglia and beyond having performed at international festivals in mainland Europe, appeared on prime time TV and had a concert broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Their show The Arms of Sleep has been commissioned for the 2018 Brighton International Festival.

Tickets priced £12 (£10 concessions) are available from www.voiceproject.co.uk which also has information on all Voice Project activities.

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