...Women who have made a difference
Witches, bitches, spinsters and whores!
Women have been slandered and attacked whenever they have dared to stand up, fight back or be true to themselves. The more formidable the woman, the more ferocious the slurs.
But, as American writer and activist Audre Lorde said unapologetically, ‘Women are powerful and dangerous’. In this spirit, The Fourth Choir is offering a concert in praise of self-identifying women across history, continents and all walks of life. Spanning politics, religion, journalism, science, sports and the arts, we will tell histories of both well-known and hidden women who changed our world – from Queen Elizabeth I to Lady Phyll, from Sappho to Marielle Franco, and from Nina Simone to Lyra McKee.
The music will be just as diverse as these amazing women are – with compositions by African-American Rosephayne Powell, Baroque nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Italian singer Barbara Strozzi, as well as music honouring women written by John Wilbye, Francis Poulenc, and a set of Mexican folk songs by David Conte.
The concert will also premiere a new commission by our Composer-in-Residence, Stuart Beach, a setting of a poem by Sofia Samatar called Girl Hours – which remembers astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt who worked at Harvard in the 1890s and discovered a way to measure stellar distances using the pulsing of variable stars.
An extraordinary concert demands an extraordinary venue and we are thrilled that this concert will be at Charterhouse, one of London’s largest hidden gems. This eight-acre site next to Smithfield Market has, since 1348, been variously a monastery, a private mansion, a boys school and an almshouse and yet it remains largely invisible to busy Londoners. In order to let our audience see as much of this historic site as possible, the performance will wander from the beautiful 16th century chapel to the 14th century cloister and then to the Great Chamber where the 25 year-old Elizabeth I held court when preparing for her coronation.
Charterhouse is fully accessible for audience members with restricted mobility.
Concessions are available for audience members 65 and over, people in receipt of Universal Credit, Income Support or Job Seekers allowance, Students, Children under 18 and disabled people (with free entry for one carer).