Emma’s composition O Lux Beata Trinitas from the poem by St. Ambrose will be sung at Evensong and Eucharist at Gloucester Cathedral, England.

O Lux Beata Trinitas plays on the idea of the Trinity. Each vocal line uses only three notes, thus limiting the chord combinations available.

A recording can be found on Emma’s composer page.

The Leidse Cantorij will be singing in Gloucester from 20^th– 26^thAugust with conductor Hans Brons and organists Huw Williams and Martyn Noble.

Saturday, 25^thAugust, Evensong 16:30

Sunday, 26^thAugust, Eucharist 10:15

Emma will sing during the Hay on Wye World War One Commemoration Weekend. This is the culmination of a series of commemorations which have taken place since 2014 organised by the Royal British Legion for Hay and the surrounding towns and villages.

The weekend will include living history exhibitions, military bands, veterans groups, and parades. Emma will sing during the remembrance service with the Surrey Police Band, the Swansea City Pipe Band, and Talgarth Male Choir, Wern Fach Choir, and Rhayader Voices in Unity. One hundred red roses will be laid in memory of the fallen.

There will be a performance of a new song, “Home at Last,” composed especially for the occasion by John Rees and arranged by musical director Graham Atterbury.

4^thand 5^thAugust, Hay on Wye, Wales.

“…it sounded more exciting than peeling potatoes…”

Patrick Churchill volunteered for the Royal Marines when he was just seventeen years old. He was called up in March, 1942, just after his eighteenth birthday. He then volunteered for Special Service because “it sounded more exciting than peeling potatoes,” taking the Commando Course at Achnacarry, Scotland.

Patrick served with the 2^ndRoyal Marines Armoured Support Regiment and landed on Juno Beach on D-Day, 6thJune 1944. After a month fighting in the Battle of Normandy, he returned briefly to the UK and was reassigned to the 4 Army Commando. Patrick returned to Europe and participated in the liberation of Walcheren, the Netherlands, landing on Uncle Beach, Vlissingen, on 1^stNovember 1944. There is a plaque in Walcheren in Patrick’s honour.

In 1960, Patrick met a lady called Karin Busch. She had lost her mother in the bombing of Dresden and her twin brother was blinded in the fire storm. Patrick and Karin fell in love and married in 1962

Emma met Karin in Normandy in 2016. The following year, she met Patrick in Passchendaele, where he was attending the commemorations of the centenary of the Battle of Passchendaele in which his father had seen action with the Grenadier Guards.

Sadly, Karin passed away last January. Patrick travelled to Normandy in June with his son, Francis. A few weeks later, he passed away. Emma will travel to England privately to sing at his funeral.

Link: the story of Partick and Karin Churchill.

Emma will travel to Northern Ireland to sing for First World War remembrance and for the commemorations of the Battle of the Boyne. She will sing during remembrance ceremonies in Newcastle on 12^thJuly and in Scarva before a reenactment of the Battle of the Boyne on 13^thJuly. The organisation is expecting over 80,000 people to attend the event in Scarva – Emma’s largest live audience to date.

Ireland suffered significant losses in the First World War. Last week, Emma sang in the Somme for remembrance ceremonies for the 36^th(Ulster) Division who suffered over 5,500 casualties in two days of fighting. Emma also sang for the 16^th(Irish) Division in Guillemont. In the battles for Guillemont and neighbouring Ginchy, they suffered over 5,000 casualties – nearly half of the division.

This year is the centenary of the end of the First World War, so during the festivities around the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne, the casualties of the First World War will be commemorated.

On Saturday, 7^thJuly Emma will sing in Amiens, France, as part of the United Pipers for Peace event. During the First World War, Amiens provided logistical support for the troops on the front line. Allied soldiers from different countries rested and recuperated in the city.

During the weekend of 7^thand 8^thJuly, over four hundred pipers from different countries will give concerts in Amiens. Emma will sing during the remembrance ceremony in the cathedral and on the square before the sound and lights show.

Last January, Emma recorded composer Roland Bouman’s setting of Vera Brittain’s “Perhaps.” The poem is an elegy for her fiancé, Roland Leighton, who died of a sniper wound in Hébuterne, Northern France, on 23^rdDecember 2015, aged just twenty.

The Dutch radio programme “Music and Poetry” interviewed Emma and Roland (in Dutch) and broadcast the recording. It is possible to listen through this link.

Our vocabulary is not adapted to describe such an existence, because it is outside experience for which words are normally necessary.*

The first day of the Battle of the Somme (1917) alone saw over seventy-thousand casualties. By the end of the battle, there were over a million soldiers and officers wounded, killed, or missing in action.

The immense CWGC memorial in Thiepval commemorates the missing 72,337 British and South African servicemen – a mere fraction of the total casualties. It is the largest Commonwealth memorial to the missing in the world.

Emma will sing at the Royal British Legion’s remembrance ceremony at Thiepval on the anniversary of the first day of the Battle of the Somme on 1^stJuly.

She will also sing at the Ulster Tower where the Irish service men are commemorated, and during a tattoo in Arras on 30^thJune.

*Source: Royal British Legion CD “Forever: The Official Album of the World War One Commemorations,” 2014