Shipley Arts Festival To Premiere New Work Inspired By The UK's First Wild White Stork Hatching For Centuries

The premiere of a new work inspired by the rewilding of white storks at Knepp Estate in Sussex will take place in an online concert broadcast by the Bernardi Music Group at 6.30pm on Sunday 19 July as part of the 2020 Shipley Arts Festival.

A creative response to the first hatching of wild white storks in the UK for centuries earlier this year at Knepp Estate in Sussex, White Storks has been written by composer Helen Ottaway and commissioned by violinist Andrew Bernardi and the Bernardi Music Group who will perform and record it at Knepp Castle as part of the 20th edition of the Shipley Arts Festival.

In May it was announced that over 600 years since the last known white storks were born in the wild in the UK, chicks successfully hatched at Knepp Estate in Sussex. The breakthrough forms part of the White Stork Project; a partnership of private landowners and nature conservation organisations working together to restore a population of at least 50 breeding pairs of white storks in southern England by 2030.

To mark the historic event for UK wildlife and for Sussex, the county's Shipley Arts Festival has commissioned a new work to be premiered at its annual Wilding Concert (a series founded four years ago to reflect the achievements of Knepp's already-existing Wildland Project) which will be recorded in a socially distanced performance in the Hall of Knepp Castle. Previous Wilding Concert commissions have included Roderick Williams' Knepp Piano Trio inspired by the work the estate is doing to help protect endangered turtle doves.

Depicting the white storks' migratory journey from Africa to Sussex, Ottaway's new work is scored for string octet and will be performed alongside the projection of images of the birds at Knepp. White Storks will also be paired with a performance of the Scherzo movement of Mendelssohn's Octet.

The octet will be led by violinist and director of Bernardi Music Group and Shipley Arts Festival, Andrew Bernardi.

"The Bernardi Music Group and Shipley Arts Festival have enjoyed a close and wonderfully enriching partnership with Knepp Estate over twenty years", says Bernardi. "We celebrate their pioneering work through our annual Wilding Concert and recent commissions inspired by the rewilding project have included Roderick Williams' Knepp Piano Trio in 2018 as well as Helen Ottaway's new work. We couldn't miss this opportunity to celebrate such an historic moment especially as white storks are very much associated with our home county of Sussex. The Saxon name for the village of Storrington means "the village of the storks" and other place names in the area, such as Storwood and Storgelond, bring to mind the stork's historical presence here. I look forward to sharing Helen's new work with our local Sussex audience and also to our new international audience who have joined us over the last few months through our online broadcasts."

Helen Ottaway commented, "As part of my research for the White Storks project, I joined a virtual stork walk organised by the Knepp Estate which was wonderful and a great source of inspiration. I have always been interested in musical performance as choreography and so I'm particularly excited to be creating a work which will reflect both in the music and the physical movement of the players, the birds, their soaring flight, their nesting and their very distinctive bill clattering. Interestingly, the white stork is probably best known for its role in European folklore as the bringer of babies to new parents. Perhaps this association with rebirth and regeneration holds a particular resonance now, at a time when the world is trying to recover from the events of the past few months."

Filmed and recorded in the Hall of Knepp Castle, the Wilding Concert will include an introduction by Sir Charles and Lady Issy Burrell who will discuss the White Stork Project in conversation with Andrew Bernardi.

In a nod to the concert's theme of birds and in celebration of the centenary of his birth, the music of legendary saxophonist Charlie Parker - often nicknamed "Bird" - will also feature in the Zoom broadcast alongside works by George Gershwin and Cole Porter performed by other musicians of the Bernardi Music Group and recorded from the country estates of Lackenhurst and Findon.

The Wilding Concert will broadcast on Zoom at 6.30pm on Sunday 19 July.

Tickets are available at https://shipleyartsfestival.co.uk/andrew-bernardi-knepp-castle/ with a suggested donation cost of £10-£25.

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