Alison Bauld, March 2020
(Picture: Ross Chatfield)
Alison Bauld’s new song cycle ‘I Shall Not Live in Vain’ had its first performance at the Red House, Aldeburgh on the 7th of May, 2024
The song cycle was commissioned by soprano Mimi Doulton and pianist Dylan Perez with the support of the Vaughan Williams Foundation and the Marchus Trust.
It includes eight poems by Emily Dickinson:
I’m Nobody! Who Are You? - I Measure Every Grief I Meet - The Rat - The Pedigree of Honey - I Felt a Funeral in My Brain - I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died - Wild Nights - If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking.
The poems are a selection of works by Dickinson taken from the collection edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and T.W. Higginson.
Roger Wright CBE, Chief Executive of Britten Pears Arts, who attended the concert which coincided with Alison’s 80th birthday, said after the concert:
“It was a pleasure to hear the first performance of Alison Bauld’s new song cycle which sets poems by Emily Dickinson. I have known and admired Alison’s work for over 40 years and was only sorry that she was not able to travel to The Red House to hear the recital given by soprano Mimi Doulton and pianist Dylan Perez. It was a powerful and atmospheric performance in the unique surroundings of the Library at The Red House, run by Britten Pears Arts where I now work.
Alison had provided introductions about the creative challenge of text selection and its setting and the whole experience captivated the audience.”
Further Information
For further information about this new song cycle and other compositions by Alison Bauld please use the contact form on this website. Digital copies of this song cycle and other works are available.
About Alison Bauld
Alison Bauld, Australian-born composer and writer,
has lived in the UK since 1968. She was a piano pupil of Alexander Sverjensky at the NSW Conservatorium of Music, (1956-1960)., before studying drama at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, (NIDA). This was followed by a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Sydney and a doctorate in composition from the University of York. She currently lives in London.
Her novel Mozart’s Sister published by Alcina Press, is available as a paperback and has also recently been made available on Amazon Kindle as an eBook.
THE LODGERS
Recently published - now available on Amazon as an eBook and paperback
Alison Bauld’s second novel The Lodgers is very different from Mozart’s Sister. Now she has turned her hand to writing a black comedy set in suburban London around the year 2000. It is a fairytale with a sting in its tail, a satire of a penny-pinching family in London. They are just making do with the help of paying student lodgers and as harassed, self-centred parents with three hapless children (one trapped in permanent babyhood) plus various lodgers they inhabit a world where nothing is quite as it seems. With two murders… a bizarre French holiday… and a plethora of peculiar lodgers, what happens to this odd but strangely endearing family teases expectation and takes you by surprise.
………………………………………………..
Joyce Andrews, Journal of Singing, USA, Vol 60,
No 1, 2003 said about Alison Bauld:
“A theatrical background has shared centre stage with her musicianship in informing her writing style … Bauld has instilled her vocal music with a dramatic flair uncommon among other contemporary song writers.”
Joyce Andrews, Journal of Singing, USA, Vol 60, No 1, 2003 said about Alison Bauld:
