BEN PALMER Ganymede (world premiere - Thaxted Festival commission)
SAINT-SAËNS The Carnival of the Animals
WALTON Façade

Covent Garden Sinfonia
Zeb Soanes narrator/reciter
Selina Cadell reciter
Timothy Redmond conductor

Broadcaster and Thaxted Festival patron Zeb Soanes makes a welcome return to Thaxted, joined by well-known actress Selina Cadell, to recite Sitwell's poems in Walton's Façade, an ‘entertainment’ concocted in 1921 by 19-year-old composer William Walton and 34-year-old avant-garde poet Edith Sitwell. Some of the lines of poetry make sense, sometimes an entire poem makes sense, but most of the time it’s just engaging nonsense rhymes!

The ensemble accompaniment is provided this evening by Covent Garden Sinfonia, one of London’s most dynamic and versatile chamber orchestras. Based on then-current jazz bands, and employing rhythms borrowed from early jazz, the attractive and colourful score of Façade has made this an enduring favourite. Saint-Saëns’s well-known 14-movement suite, The Carnival of the Animals, with text by Roger McGough narrated by Zeb Soanes, provides fun for young and old, while a new commission by CGS Artistic Director Ben Palmer completes the programme. 

This concert is sponsored in memory of Denys and Marie Stott.

Tickets: £36 • £30 • £20 • £13 • £10 age 30 and under
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