Crossing the line of dreams
Roxanna Panufnik and I have been working on our first collaboration since Silver Birch. It's being premiered this week in Baltimore under the joint batons of Marin Alsop and Valentina Peleggi. Yes, both of them. It's for double choir, double orchestra and two conductors. And it is about two powerful women (by which I don't mean either them or us, at least not first of all...). Harriet Tubman source: National Geographic Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi, India, and Harriet Tubman, who saved hundreds from slavery in America before, during and after the Civil War, obviously never met in real life. But they were near-contemporaries and both gave their lives to the cause of freedom for their people. Harriet Tubman lived to a ripe old age and was venerated as 'Moses'. Rani Lakshmibai was killed in battle at the age of 29. The Rani has recently been the subject of a major biopic, but we wrote this piece before we knew about that. Harriet Tubman's previous musical incarnations ...