A Heavenly Harmony

Chelys Consort of Viols and vocal ensemble Vespri Segreti are joined by the chapel choir of St John’s College to chart Orlando Gibbons’s life from his birth in Oxford, his employment and travels with the Chapel Royal, to his untimely death in Canterbury in 1625. Gibbons wrote pieces that can be linked to specific people and places throughout his life, and he worked alongside some of the most influential musicians of the age.

Programme includes: This Is The Record of John (written for St John’s College Oxford); As On the Night (he was baptised on Christmas Day in 1583); Fusca In Thy Starry Eyes (written by Thomas Tomkins in honour of Gibbons, his senior at the Chapel Royal); Grant O Holy Trinity (possibly written for performance in Canterbury on Trinity Sunday, and therefore likely one of the last pieces Gibbons wrote because he died a week before it was performed).

This concert is part of the Gibbons 400 Festival.