Lament: a ritual of letting go

In Lament: a ritual of letting go, five musicians gather to create a ritual through music and movement. Two singers, a violinist, a santoor and a keyboard player draw their inspiration from existing rituals that focus on circularity: canonical hours, traditional antiphonal singing associated with manual labour, and the slow movement of a funeral procession. In this performance, older music meets new commissioned works, allowing the pieces to communicate with each other across time and regions of the world. The repertoire includes the Byzantine hymns of Kassia, folksongs from Scotland, Corsica and France, and songs of longing from either end of history by Josquin des Prez and Catherine Lamb. Contemporary laments have been commissioned from Soosan Lolavar, Luke Nickel, Christopher Trapani and James Weeks. Deliberately minimalist, the staging uses various gestures from domestic and liturgical contexts, transforming the concert into an accessible and deeply personal ritual.

With Lament: a ritual of letting go, British soprano Fraser responds to the disappearance of communal singing, something she aims to rediscover and revitalise with newfound inspiration. At the same time, the performance is an expression of the artist’s personal crisis in relation to purely perfectionist, professional singing. “I was trying to let go of the ‘art’ of song (of me serving the art) and find liberation through lament. That has been a slow and painful process, but through the grieving — of crooked expectations, withering dreams and one, dear-departed friend — I have found a way forward. I have keened my way back into song.” Free of nostalgia, the ensemble celebrates the expressive diversity of the voice with the desire to close the gap between music and singer as well as the audience.