Chamber Choir Ireland and guest conductor Bernie Sherlock are delighted to present Shared Ground, a large-scale program that highlights our connection to land and home, as well as to each other.

The concert’s title comes from its centerpiece, the Irish premiere of Shared Ground by English composer Alec Roth. Roth’s frame of Six Poems by Vikram Seth was composed while he was at home in the Writer’s House, once owned by 16th century poet George Herbert.

The program is booked with spiritual Deep River (arr. Michael Tippett) and Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (arr. Keith Roberts), in a tradition that has long envisioned common ground as the object of human hope. Sarah Rimkus offers a response to the shared terrain forced into Uprooted, a setting of interviews with two Japanese-American women who were relocated as part of America’s World War II internment policy, and a provocative response to violation of the land is presented in Juris La Rotala from Karlsons, which cheerfully celebrates Latvian tradition in defiance of Soviet annexation.

Ground Transcends Time as part of Ian Wilson’s beautiful poem by Deirdre Brennan Bealach Conglais – Baltinglass, named after the small town of Wicklow where the present shares ground with a historically and archaeologically rich past. In Sügismaastikud (Autumn Landscapes), Estonian composer Veljo Tormis explores the discovery of new lands and their peoples through seven magnificent autumn miniatures, composed after visiting Hungary and meeting Zoltan Kodály in 1960, and reflecting the shared love of the two composers for nature and the country. .

Recorded in the atmospheric ambience of the All Hallows Chapel, the concert will be available for a week, starting at 8 p.m. on Sunday June 27.

Program (about 55min):
Deep River (from A Child of our Time) arr. Michael Tippett (United Kingdom, 1905-1998)
Uprooted – Sarah Rimkus (United States, born 1990)
Shared land – Alec Roth (UK, born 1948)
Rotala (de Neslegtais gredzens) – Juris Karlsons (Latvia, born in 1948)
Bealach Conglais (Baltinglas) – Ian Wilson (Ireland, born 1964)
Sugismaastkud (autumn landscapes) – Veljo Tormis (Estonia, 1930-2017)
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot arr. Keith roberts