Programme:

George Butterworth - A Shropshire lad (poems by A. E. Housman)

• Loveliest of Trees
• When I Was One-and-Twenty
• Look Not In My eyes
• Think No More, Lad
• The Lads in Their Hundreds
• Is My Team Ploughing?

Ivor Gurney - Songs

• Sleep (J. Fletcher)
• In Flanders (F. W. Harvey)
• All night under the moon (W. W. Gibson)
• The Salley Gardens (W. B. Yeats)
• By a Bierside (J. Masefield)

John Ireland - Two Songs (poems by Rupert Brooke)

• The Soldier
• Blow Out, You Bugles

Interval

George Butterworth - Love blows as the Wind Blows (poems by W. E. Henley)

• In the Year That's Come and Gone
• Life in Her Creaking Shoes
• Fill a Glass with Golden Wine
• On the Way to Kew

Vaughan Williams - Songs of Travel (poems by R. L. Stephenson)

• The Vagabond
• Let Beauty Awake
• The Roadside Fire
• Youth and Love
• In Dreams
• The Infinite Shining Heavens
• Whither Must I Wander
• Bright Is the Ring of Words
• I Have Trod the Upward and the Downward Slope

Tenor James Gilchrist began his working life as a doctor, turning to a full-time music career in 1996. His extensive concert repertoire has seen him perform in major concert halls throughout the world with renowned conductors including Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Roger Norrington, Bernard Labadie, Harry Christophers, Harry Bicket, Masaaki Suzuki and Richard Hickox.

A master of English music, he has performed Britten’s Church Parables in St Petersburg, in London and at the Aldeburgh Festival, Nocturne with the NHK Symphony in Tokyo and War Requiem with the San Francisco Symphony and the National Youth Orchestra of Germany. Recent highlights have included the role of Rev. Adams in Deborah Warner’s award-winning production of Britten’s Peter Grimes at the Teatro Real in Madrid and for his company debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, as well as with Bergen Philharmonic cond. Edward Gardner at the Edinburgh International Festival, the Royal Festival Hall, Grieghallen and Den Norske Opera.

Further notable appearances include Haydn’s Creation in a staged production with Garsington Opera and with Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Elijah with Goteborgs Symfoniker cond. Masaaki Suzuki, and Bach’s St Matthew Passion at King’s College, Cambridge as part of Stephen Cleobury’s final Easter week as Director of Music. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and the St John and St Matthew Passion feature prominently in James’ schedule, and he is celebrated as perhaps the finest Evangelist of his generation; as one review noted, “he hasn’t become a one-man Evangelist industry by chance”.

In the 2024-25 season, James will reprise of the role of Rev. Horace Adams in Deborah Warner’s acclaimed production of Britten’s Peter Grimes in his house debut at the Opera di Roma. Concert highlights this season include Bach’s Mass in B Minor with the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, Handel’s Messiah with Finland’s Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra, Handel’s Israel in Egypt with the Karol Szymanowski Philharmonic Orchestra in Krakow, Poland, Messiah and Christmas Oratorio at London’s St John’s Smith Square with Polyphony and Stephen Layton and a tour of Bach’s St Matthew Passion to the Netherlands with De Nederlandse Bachvereniging. In recital, he appears with pianist Anna Tilbrook at the Oxford International Song Festival, Canterbury Music Club, Bayle Music Folkstone, Carwithen Music Festival, Wensleydale Concert Series and the Three Choirs Festival. James and Anna will also be joined by horn player, Ben Goldscheider, to present a trio programme at Sherborne Abbey Festival and at Champs Hill.

In 2022, James celebrated 25 years of collaboration with pianist Anna Tilbrook. Their latest recording of the songs of Roger Quilter was released on Chandos Records in 2024.

Anna Tilbrook has been a regular artist at all the major concert halls and festivals since her debut at the Wigmore Hall in 1999 and frequently broadcasts for Radio 3.

She has collaborated with many leading singers and instrumentalists including Lucy Crowe, James Gilchrist, Ian Bostridge, Mary Bevan, Sophie Bevan, Barbara Hannigan, Sir John Tomlinson, Sir Willard White, Nicholas Daniel, Michael Collins, Natalie Clein, Philip Dukes, Jack Liebeck, Chloe Hanslip, Emily Sun, Guy Johnston, Laura van der Heijden, Jess Gilliam and the Fitzwilliam, Carducci, Sacconi, Elias, Navarra and Barbirolli string quartets.
She has also accompanied José Carreras, Angela Gheorghiu and Bryn Terfel in televised concerts.

Recent performances include at Concertgebouw Amsterdam and Carnegie Hall New York, Wigmore Hall, St John’s Smith Square, deSingel Antwerp, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Anima Mundi Pisa, Wrocław Cantans, appearances at the Edinburgh, Aldeburgh, Cheltenham, Oxford Lieder, Jersey, West Cork and Savannah (Georgia) Chamber Music festivals and curating a number of series of concerts for the BBC.

In 2022 Anna and James Gilchrist celebrated 25 years as a duo partnership. They have made a series of acclaimed recordings of English song for Linn and Chandos, the Schubert song cycles for Orchid, Schumann’s cycles, the songs and chamber music of Vaughan Williams with Philip Dukes, “Solitude”, settings of Purcell, Schubert, Barber and a cycle written for James and Anna by Jonathan Dove, Under Alter’d Skies and most recently a disc of songs by Roger Quilter.

In August 2021 Lucy Crowe and Anna marked 20 years of working together by releasing their disc “Longing” featuring Lieder by Strauss, Berg and Schoenberg on the Linn label.

In 2023 Anna was on the jury for the Song Prize for Cardiff Singer of the World. She also teaches at the University of Oxford and Royal Academy of Music where she is an Associate.

If not sitting at the piano, Anna can normally be found watching cricket, playing tennis, having a gin and tonic or eating a curry!