29 January 2021, 'Krvava Bajka' was shortlisted and performed as part of the Holocaust Memorial Concert 'Portraits & Remembrance' at Rossi Fest, Serbia. Due to Covid-19 restrictions, the festival was a digital one. 

Ana Radovanović, Mezzo Soprano
Marija Lazić, oboe
Mihailo Samoran, clarinet
Dušan Petrović, bassoon
Vanja Šćepanović, Piano

'Krvava Bajka' is a setting of the poem of the same name about the Kragujevac Massacre 20/21 October 1941 by Desanka Maksimović, an atrocity and piece history that must never be forgotten.

In this extract we see the class of schoolboys living their day to day lives, all the same age, their bags with the same school books, all with childhood secrets, 'love and loyalty' stuffed in their pockets. Running and playing beneath the 'blue arch' (Heaven), before we are reminded of their fate in a repeated chorus. 

English: 
Their thoughts were full of figures;
their satchels full of copy-books
with marks
both good and bad;
a handful of dreams and secrets,
of love and loyalty,
stuffed into their pockets.
And it seemed to each of them
that still for long,
for so very long,
they would all run beneath the sun,
until their tasks
were done.

It happened in a far-off land of land of peasants
among the Balkan hills, where
martydom befell
a class of schoolboys gay - 
all on one day.

Serbian: 

Pregrst istih snova
i istih tajni
rodoljubivih i ljubavnih
stiskalo se u dnu dzepova.
I cinilo se svakom
da ce dugo,
da ce vrlo dugo
trcati ispod svoda plava
dok sve zadatke na svetu
ne posvrsava.

Bilo je to u nekoj zemlji seljaka
na brdovitom Balkanu,
umrla je junačkom smrcu
ceta djaka
u istom danu.

Rossi Fest 2021 - 'Krvava Bajka' ('The Bloody Fairytale') Extract

Performed by Soprano Donna Lennard and Pianist Gavin Roberts  for ‘Mental Health Matters’ presented by Song in the City (Songs & Sounds)Thursday 29 April 2021. 

Poetry by David Gilbert. 'The Last of the Lighthouse Keepers' is an excerpt from our 2017 collaborative work 'The Jewel Merchants', created with Lila Palmer and James Whittle and premiered at Bethlem Art Gallery 2017. 
 
The last of the lighthouse-keepers 
lifts the key one final time 
to the door of his blackened home 

descends the steep, cracked steps
locks down the stony monument 
and rows across the bay.

That night, from the cliff top
the ocean spread at his feet
he summons the clouds to twist a storm.

The dark captain of the lost boat
unsighted, ungovernable
caught in the grip of the straits

lifts his face one final time 
to the looming unlit tower
before ripping against the rocks.

Painting: 'Stormy Sea with Lighthouse' by Karl Blechen

The Last Of The Lighthouse Keepers (Donna Lennard, Soprano)

And the Ocean Smells Like Lilacs in Late August 2013 

Dedicated to Franz Wright 
and to the other addicts in or out of recovery
before him
and after him. 

Baritone: Benjamin Lindley
Piano: Edd Caine
Recorded and Mastered by: Matthew Brennan Thorns 

Words written by and used by kind permission of Franz Wright and publishers at Alfred A. Knopf and Oberlin College Press.



2. Beginning Of November - And the Ocean Smells Like Lilacs in Late August

And the Ocean Smells Like Lilacs in Late August 2013 

Dedicated to Franz Wright 
and to the other addicts in or out of recovery
before him
and after him. 

Baritone: Benjamin Lindley
Piano: Edd Caine
Recorded and Mastered by: Matthew Brennan Thorns 

Words written by and used by kind permission of Franz Wright and publishers at Alfred A. Knopf and Oberlin College Press.

'Drinking Back', 'Beginning of November' & Initial
Wright, Franz. 'Ill Lit: Selected & New Poems'. Oberlin: Oberlin College Press, 1998. 

'Empty Cathedral' & 'Not Now'
Wright, Franz. 'The Before Life'/ New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004

'Walking to Martha's Vineyard'
Wright, Franz. 'Walking to Martha's Vineyard'. Alfred A. Knopf, 2004

1. Drinking Back - And the Ocean Smells Like Lilacs in Late August

Written for PercusSing's Ana Beard Fernandez Late Music Concert 4th July 2015, Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate. 

THE CAT AND THE MOON

by: W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)

THE cat went here and there
And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon,
The creeping cat, looked up.
Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,
For, wander and wail as he would,
The pure cold light in the sky
Troubled his animal blood.
Minnaloushe runs in the grass
Lifting his delicate feet.
Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?
When two close kindred meet,
What better than call a dance?
Maybe the moon may learn,
Tired of that courtly fashion,
A new dance turn.
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
From moonlit place to place,
The sacred moon overhead
Has taken a new phase.
Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils
Will pass from change to change,
And that from round to crescent,
From crescent to round they range?
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
Alone, important and wise,
And lifts to the changing moon
His changing eyes.

The Cat and the Moon - Ana Beard Fernandez

’Special Treatment.’ ‘Falling standards.’ ‘Rising casualties.’

In 2016, a chorus of critical voices lamented the entry of servicewomen into full combat roles in the British Army. But in 1916, one British woman was already fighting on the Allied front line. Flora Sandes became a public heroine. A century later, her successors go operational.

Through the stories of three women, real and imagined, Dead Equal celebrates the courage and sacrifice of women in theatres of war, probing the cost and meaning of service, the influence of social structures, and the disruptive power of a female identity forged in blood and sweat.

Composer: Rose Miranda Hall
Librettist: Lila Palmer
Conductor: Noah Mosley

Flora Sandes: Gráinne Gillis
Joanna: Jennifer Parker
Emily Simmonds: Susanna Buckle

Dead Equal Scene Exploration - Helios Collective 2016

Written for The Micklegate Singers, A Drop Fell was premiered at the Late Music Concert Series, Unitarian Chapel, 1 July 2018.

Words: Emily Dickinson

A Drop Fell

Mein Schatten - My Shadow
Composed by Rose Miranda Hall 
In memory of all the lives taken in the Holocaust - Never Again 

Winner of Second Prize for the Wold Durmashkin Composition Award 2018. 

Performed by tenor Yoed Sorek and members of the Bavarian Philharmonic and conducted by Mariss Jansons 10 May 2018 1pm and 8pm. 

Text 'La mia ombra a Dachau' by Necio Vitelli 1928 - 1948, German translation with thanks to Nico Selling. 

May 10th 2018 marks the 70th anniversary of the concert of the Displaced Persons Orchestra along with the establishment of the  State of Israel (14th of May 1948).

--- 

Nevio Vitelli was born in 1928, Italy. In April 1944 he arrived alone in Germany and in September of that same year he attempted a risky journey home to his parents. It was during this attempt he was arrested by the Gestapo, and because of the antifacist propaganda he was carrying he was sent to Dachau, prisoner 111,785. He lived to see the liberation of the camp in April 1945 but died in 1948 after almost continuous hospitalisation due to illness because of the camp. He was barely 20 years old. 

Nevio only wrote this single poem, in the hospital in the town of Dachau after the liberation. 

TEXT (English)

Mama, I am not coming back,
God has told me so.

Hell,
without a sense of soul
I have seen it like this
As I touch my painful body
not even in words
Mama can I tell you
because I cannot repeat
the mark of terror. 

I think that you feel
beyond the poisonous barbed wire
of these barraks
and that you see me
with my hairless head
and the dark frame
of the black circles around my eyes
bloody and dirty
and my heart  
knelling a death bell

What have I done Mama?
Do you know? Tell me
And kiss me in my sleep
Light and fleeting
That I wouldn’t even dare
to kiss you back
like when you used to cry
about me, the naughty boy
I do not what your eyes to be empty

Mama, do you understand me? 

When in the evening
I sing your name, sobbing
unfinished and in vain
the trick of my lip
reveals: you do not reply.

…It is the evening hour
and the thoughts of the day
no longer return
like the first day of morning
to revive me
It is the evening  hour
and thoughts are tomorrow.

Dachau!

Now, only now
I hear music that sprinkles
the air with the beats of stars
or not, perhaps they are the beats of hearts
and of blood
of the blood that surges 
through the living
covering them with dust.

WDCA

Mein Schatten - Wolf Durmashkin Composition Award 2018

An extract from chamber opera Dead Equal to be premiered at Army@TheFringe 2019. This extract is performed by Eleanor Ross at the workshop of Dead Equal at the University of London Officer's Training Centre June 2019, made possible by Help Musician's Fusion Fund. Piano accompaniment by Music Director James Garner. 

Join the chorus and make Dead Equal sing at Edinburgh Fringe: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/make-dead-equal-sing-at-edfringe19 

The unsung stories of women medics in combat through time are given voice in a new opera directed by Miranda Cromwell. This pioneering production weaves together gripping testimonies gathered from contemporary servicewomen of the Royal Army Medical Corps with the forgotten true story of nurse Flora Sandes, a British medical volunteer on the Allied front who joined the fighting and won the Serbian Army’s highest medal for valour in World War I.

Written by Lila Palmer with music by Rose Miranda Hall featuring the Band of the Royal Regiment of Scotland. 

Flora Sandes:	Give me your hand
Emily Simmonds:	What?
Flora: Both of them. 
Look at those fingers.
Long and lean. 
Precise.
Delicate
Cool as ice. 
You’d be a surgeon
If the world weren’t stupid. 
But it is stupid.
So you have to try. 
Just try.  
Try because you’re better
Better than you know.
You’re better
And no one far from here
Will ever know. 
Otherwise they’ll die and die. 
Try. 
For me?

Emily:		Alright.
		Alright.

Look at those Fingers - Extract from Dead Equal

Paper Woman 
Performed by Rachel Lloyd Mezzo & Lana Bode Piano
Text Lila Palmer

Extract from Paper Woman, commissioned by PRS for Music and Wild Plum Arts for the Wild Plum Songbook. The Wild Plum Songbook was created in partnership with PRS for Music, Wild Plum Arts and Cheltenham Music Festival and the inaugural work shop took place at the PRS Kings Cross offices from 8 to 9 March.

Learn more here: www.m-magazine.co.uk/news/composers…9NKtvUrhK3tkYY

Paper Woman (Extract) - Wild Plum Song Book 2019

Excerpt (recitative and aria) from 'Dead Equal' at Army @The Fringe 2019. Teiya Kasahara as First World War nurse Flora Sandes. 

Flora Sandes: Teiya Kasahara
Emily Simmonds: Lila Palmer
Joanna Epke: Simone Ibbett-Brown

Composer & Co-Producer: Rose Miranda Hall
Librettist & Co-Producer: Lila Palmer
Director: Miranda Cromwell
Music Director: James Garner
Orchestra: The Band of the Royal Regiment of Scotland

Recit.
Flora: Orderly!
Clear this bed
and bring up
the next patient.
Mind you burn the
Dressings!

(Flora pulls a sheet up over a patient’s head, shakes her head and moves down stage.)

Aria.
The daily train arrives...
we wait.
In hope of fresh supplies...
We wait.
We clean and sanitize...
We wait.
They die before our eyes...
We wait.

We are not enough.
This is not enough.
It changes nothing.
They die. They die and die.
This is not what I here for, 
I came to….
I came too….
I came to do.

How many times
can I die watching them,
in this undying war?

Every battle brings in more...
I wait.
The waves of death break on our shore...
I wait.
The men do what they’re rais’d up for...
I wait.
Sleepless whilst shame sleeps at my door...
I wait:
to shoot; to kill; to live this war. 

Production Design: Anna Driftmier
Sound Design: Richard Bell
Lighting Design: Michael Chapman Pincher
Company Manager: Will Edelsten
Production Manager: Andreas Ayling
Stage Manager: Ashley Taylor Frampton
Photography: Nick Johns, British Army Media

Rose Miranda Hall

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