Samantha Crawford, soprano
Gavin Roberts, piano
The Freedom Cries Out programme features a newly commissioned song cycle by composer Raymond Yiu, setting stories from real refugee accounts. It also includes the UK premiere of Shawn Okpebholo’s song cycle Words Like Freedom, setting poems of Langston Hughes, and Jake Heggie’s These Strangers. These cycles sit alongside selected songs by Errollyn Wallen, Cecilia McDowall, Cheryl Frances-Hoad amongst others. The programme features two newly created songs from arias in Roxanna Panufnik’s opera, ‘Dalia’ (Garsington Opera, 2022), telling the story of a Syrian refugee girl as she crosses the Mediterranean Sea.