The Fourth Choir Perform Music by Exclusively Queer Composers at Wigmore Hall This Pride Month

The Fourth Choir, which celebrates its 10th birthday in 2023, makes its debut at Wigmore Hall on Friday 23 June with a late-night concert featuring music written exclusively by queer composers. The concert, titled Love, Loss and the Whole Damn Thing, takes place during Pride month and is conducted by Nicholas Chalmers (BBC Singers, Nevill Holt Opera) and presented by BBC Radio 3’s Petroc Trelawny. The Fourth Choir celebrate Pride at this late-night, one-hour concert, which will be introduced by the choir's patron, Dame Ann Murray.

The concert features the passionate setting of an ancient Irish poem by Samuel Barber, Gian Carlo Menotti’s lover of more than 40 years; “A Boy and a Boy”, a celebration of a lifelong queer relationship by the Canadian composer, Stuart Beatch, sets a poem written as a queer riposte to the well-known piece by Eric Whitacre, “A Boy and A Girl”. A lighter-hearted moment comes from Jennifer Higdon’s witty “Telegram” which references both Elvis and Emily Dickinson. We then we come back down to earth with the heart-breaking motet “Help Us O Lord” by Aaron Copland and Michael Tippett’s rousing setting of the spiritual “Deep River”.

There’ll be all this and much more - from Benjamin Britten, Meredith Monk, Michael Bussewitz-Quarm, Peter Maxwell Davies, Kerry Andrew, William Linthicum-Blackhorse and Leonard Bernstein – exclusively queer composers exploring everything in this life and beyond.

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