TheThe Voice Project Choir …And is this a Dream?

The Voice Project’s new, staged piece for a choir of over one hundred voices in the highly atmospheric concrete industrial spaces of St Mary’s Works, a former shoe factory. There are three performances at 5.30pm, 7.15pm and 9pm.

In this promenade performance the audience will be invited to take an evocative journey through the interior of a building inhabited by others throughout its long history. With each song depicting a different dreamscape, and atmospheric lighting the performance will evoke that half-lit, liminal world between being asleep and awake.

‘…And is this a Dream?’ is a further development from The Arms of Sleep, the groundbreaking overnight choral piece developed by The Voice Project for the Norfolk & Norwich and Brighton Festivals. The title is inspired by The Birds of East London by poet Stephen Watts, a long-term Voice Project collaborator.

Co-director Jonathan Baker says “Working in St Mary’s Works is a new departure for us. I’m really looking forward to working in the acoustic of this iconic factory building which was right at the heart of Norwich industry for so many years. Hearing a hundred-voice choir in there will be something very special”.

Music for the concerts has been specially written by Helen Chadwick, Orlando Gough and Jonathan Baker.
Words are by George Szirtes, Mary Oliver and Wallace Stevens

The choir is totally open access and anyone can join whether they have any experience of singing or not. Despite this, their performances are produced to exacting professional standards. They have been featured on BBC1 and ITV and national radio