Summer Music in City Churches: Love’s Labours

St Giles Cripplegate

This year’s Summer Music in City Churches focuses on Shakespeare and under the title Love’s Labours runs at a single City church, St Giles Cripplegate from 6 to 15 June 2024. 

Pierre Vallet and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra open the festival with a concert featuring Gerald Finzi’s incidental music to Shakespeare’s Love’s Labours Lost along with Mendelssohn and Chopin. Soprano Rachel Nicholls and baritone Roderick Williams join Iain Farrington and City of London Choir to close the festival with Farrington’s jazz-influenced cantata Then Sing We All and Joseph Horovitz’s Captain Noah and the Floating Zoo!

Other performers at the festival include violinist David Juritz and the Curve Ensemble in a tango-inspired programme, string quartet Brother Tree Sound and Tier3 Trio. Pianist Viv McLean, violinist Fenella Humphreys and narrator Jessica Duchen present Archangel marking the centenary of Faure’s death, baritone David Greco and pianist Gavin Robert’s perform Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin and there is an evening of Shakespearean words and music from pianist Nigel Hess, actors Nancy Carroll and Richard Teverson and singers Michael Dore and Eleanor Grant.

Celebrating their 130th birthday, the City of London School for Girls joins forces with City of London School to present songs on a theme of love and Shakespeare, directed by Richard Quesnel. There’s a particular nod to the Bard’s First Folio, printed 400 years ago just a stone’s throw from St Giles Cripplegate.

Full details from the festival website.