Composer Cecilia McDowall’s busy week

Cecilia McDowall

A world premiere, two London premieres and an album launch concert

Cecilia McDowall has a busy week coming up. In the week of 16 June the composer, who lives in Bedford Park, will have four performances of her work: a world premiere, two London premieres and an album launch concert.

The London premieres will take place as part of the Bedford Park Festival, and as if that weren’t enough, her garden will feature in the Festival’s Open Gardens.

Cecilia is considered one of the leading choral and vocal composers of her generation, having been short-listed eight times for the British Composer Awards. In 2014 she won the Choral category for Night Flight, a haunting piece which celebrates the pioneering flight of the American aviatrix, Harriet Quimby, across the English Channel.

She has won many awards for her work and her music has been commissioned and performed by leading choirs and artists, including the BBC Singers, The Sixteen, Oxford and Cambridge choirs, ensembles, and at festivals worldwide.

In December 2020 she was presented with the prestigious Ivor Novello Award for ‘outstanding works collection’ for a ‘consistently excellent body of work’. She has received two honorary doctorates and an honorary fellowship award from the Royal School of Church Music for her outstanding contribution to church music.

She is also a keen gardener and is greatly aggrieved that by the time of the Open Gardens her roses will be past their best.

Roses in Cecilia McDowall’s garden

Looking at her calendar, to be fair, the week of 16 June does not look exceptionally busy. In between now and then she has gigs at Canterbury Cathedral and St. Mary’s Cathedral Linz, in Austria.

But in the week of 16 June, we will be able to enjoy her music here.

The first London premiere is the Bedford Park Festival concert on Wednesday 18 June at which, she says: “fabulous local musicians, violinist, David Juritz, and pianist, Mark Viner” will play Exaudi.

READ ALSO: 2025 Summer of festivals – The Bedford Park Festival

David Juritz violin; Yuri Zhislin viola; Adrian Bradbury cello; Mark Viner piano

On Sunday, 22 June, during the Festival Mass, her anthem, Prayer, a setting of George Herbert’s beautiful poem of the same name, will be sung by the Festival Chorus and conducted by Jonathan Dods, with a soprano soloist singing over the chorus the haunting words, Church bells beyond the stars heard.

On Tuesday 17 June, “the fine ORA Singers”, conductor, Suzi Digby, will give the premiere of Cecilia’s new anthem, O clap your hands re-imagined, at St Martin-in-the-Fields, to commemorate the Renaissance composer, Orlando Gibbons, in the 400th anniversary year of his death.

Also, in the same week, “the excellent consort of singers, Tenebrae”, will perform a piece of hers written in memory of the remarkable nurse, Edith Cavell, who was executed in 1915 by the Germans after it was discovered she had helped around 200 soldiers escape occupied Belgium back to England.

The launch concert of Tenebrae’s new album will include her Standing as I do before God and takes place at St James’s, Piccadilly on Thursday 19 June.

For more information: ceciliamcdowall.co.uk

And then there’s the Bedford Park Festival Open Gardens, which takes place in the afternoon of Sunday 22 June.

“With so much recent rain, and an early flowering season, my roses will be well and truly over. But here are some photos before disintegration!”

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