The second Sunday in December is worldwide candle-lighting day, a chance for people to light candles for children who have died. 

The grief of miscarriage, still birth, and of losing a child is not as well-acknowledged as one might hope. In my home town, people are invited to come together for a non-religious ceremony in which there is the chance to light a candle for the deceased and to speak his or her name. 

I will be singing during the ceremony. It is the tenth year the ceremony has been held, and I’ve sung almost every year from the start. It is one of the hardest ceremonies to sing, even whilst knowing that the babies and children live on in the broken hearts of those who are present. 

For more information, please visit this page.

On 1st December, Emma will join the Leiden Toonkunstorkest and conductor Jeppe Moulijn to perform Willam Walton’s settings of Edith Sitwell’s poems, ‘Façade.’ The poems, which are spoken, not sung, have catchy rhythms and word play around assonance and dissonance.

The work was conceived as a tongue-in-cheek answer to Schönberg’s ‘Pierrot Lunaire.’ The poems have been compared to Edward Lear’s ‘Nonsense Verses.’ Walton’s music, composed when he was living with Sitwell, sets down the rhythm for the spoken text and provides musical accompaniment to them. Sometimes there are well-known melodies quoted alongside the text, such as ‘Oh I do like to be beside the seaside.’ At other moments, the music has a dance form, such as tango, waltz, or tarantella. There are also references to hornpipe music and Alpine music.

Practicing the poems at home has been tremendous fun, since our toddler seems to enjoy trying to dance to the rhythms of the texts, even without the orchestral accompaniment. If you are able to attend the performance, I hope it brings you the same feeling of joy!

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Every year on 3^rd October, the city of Leiden, the Netherlands, celebrates her liberation from hostile forces in 1574. The traditions include community singing at dawn, shared food, a parade of local orchestras, a remembrance ceremony, and a fun fair.

This year marked 450 years of liberation, and to mark this the 3 October Vereeniging commissioned new community songs. I was delighted to be asked to composed a song about Magdalena Moens. Moens was the lover of the captain of the opposing army, and she managed to negotiate with him that his troops would not attack Leiden, and even to bring food to the starving citizens of Leiden. She is Leiden’s heroine, and sadly until recently she has not had the attention she deserved.

My song was published together with two other new songs in a new song book, and I presented the song to the public during their community rehearsal.