Journeys Through Music and the Moving Image

Part of the Humanities Cultural Programme, one of the founding stones for the
future Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities.

Journeys Through Music and the Moving Image
Orchestra of St John’s

Dr Cayenna Ponchione-Bailey, conductor and PI

Booking details here. This event will be held at SJE Arts
Tickets £15

Join us in person for a powerful evening uniting music and the moving image to celebrate the culmination of the TORCH-funded HCP project: Journey: Bridging Cultures Through Music led by Dr Cayenna Ponchione-Bailey. Journey is an outgrowth of Displaced Voices, Dr Ponchione-Bailey’s previous TORCH funded music project in collaboration with Dr Toby Young and OSJ, which amplified the voices of young refugees through orchestral music and poetry.

The concert features the premiere of Many Worlds in One Place, a work combining sound-art, film and string orchestra composed by Dr Young and filmmaker Ross Harrison – the final product of Journey, an 18-month collaborative project with young asylum seekers at the Oxford Spires Academy and their year 12 colleagues. Dr Ponchione-Bailey, Dr Young and Mr Harrison, with support from a team of University of Oxford undergraduate and graduate students from the Faculty of Music worked with over 30 young people to create this new composition which celebrates their diverse cultural heritages and new lives here in Oxford. The piece will receive its preview performance at Oxford Spires Academy for students and staff on 21 June.

The concert begins with a performance of Arvo Pärt’s gorgeous Spiegel im Spiegel performed by Welsh violinist, Siobhan Clough, accompanied by a new film and live performance response painting by Ruskin School of Art student, Hugo Max. It also features the live premiere of Reaching Water written by Hannah Jacobs and Nikò O’Brien of the Oxford-based alternative pop band pecq and recorded in OVADA by Dr Ponchione-Bailey OSJ during the pandemic. The piece is in response to the water security research of Dr Catherine Grasham for REACH at the University of Oxford School of Geography and the Environment and was featured as Gramophone Magazine’s video of the day last November. It will be performed alongside its sister piece Earth Flow. In these pieces OSJ’s lush strings are intermixed with experimental electronics and modular synth accompanied by images and videography by Ross Harrison and Alice Chautard.