Don’t miss vocal music at its finest when VOCES8 return to the Sydney Opera House with special guest violinist Jack Liebeck, this season’s only Utzon Music Series concert in the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall. 

Named for Jake Runestedt’s haunting Let My Love Be Heard, VOCES8’s program explores themes of healing, solace and hope alongside the ensemble’s soaring jazz arrangements. Inspired by birds in music and poetry, the program includes Ralph Vaughan Williams’ famous orchestral work The Lark Ascending in a special arrangement for choir and violin, Caroline Shaw’s and the swallow with a violin part written by VOCES8 baritone Christopher Moore and the world premiere of Effortlessly by American composer Taylor Scott Davis. Following VOCES8’s recent work with Paul Simon on his Grammy-nominated 2023 album Seven Psalms, the program includes two of his classic songs alongside arrangements of music by George Gershwin, Ben Folds and Kate Rusby.

PROGRAM

Let My Love Be Heard
Orlando Gibbons O Clap your hands
Melissa Dunphy Halcyon Days
Jake Runestad Let My Love Be Heard
Taylor Scott Davis Effortlessly
Caroline Shaw and the swallow
Ralph Vaughan Williams arr. Paul Drayton The Lark Ascending

Interval

Nat King Cole arr. Jim Clements Straighten Up and Fly Right
Kate Rusby arr. Jim Clements Underneath the Stars
Ben Folds arr. Clements The Luckiest
Thomas Weelkes As Vesta Was from Lathmos Hill Descending
Orlando di Lasso Dessus le Marché d’Arras
Simon and Garfunkel arr. Alexander L’Estrange The Sound of Silence
Paul Simon arr. Emily Dickens 59th Street Bridge Song
Don McLean arr. Jim Clements Vincent
Marvin Hamlisch & Carole Bayer-Sager arr. Jim Clements Nobody Does It Better
George Gershwin arr. Jim Clements Slap That Bass