Hear her voice | London Concord Singers

A millennium of music by female composers to celebrate the centenary of women's suffrage.

For their summer concerts, London Concord Singers and conductor Jessica Norton are presenting a programme of music by female composers, sacred music by Hildegard of Bingen from the 11th century, part-songs by Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel from the 19th century, and three works by significant British women composers of the 20th century, Grace Williams, Elizabeth Maconchy and Thea Musgrave, and contemporary pieces by Cecilia McDowall and Lucy Pankhurst's The Pankhurst Anthem commissioned by the BBC to celebrate the centenary of women's suffrage.

The centre piece of the programme will be the trio of 20th century works, with Grace Williams's Ave maris stella, a late and significant work from 1973 by this Welsh composer, Thea Musgrave's Four Madrigals, settings of Sir Thomas Wyatt and some of her earliest works, and Elizabeth Machonchy's delightful Creatures, an imaginative setting of animal poems written in 1979. Also in the programme is Cecilia McDowall's Regina Caeli, a work extremely popular with the choir.